For some baffling reason, many refuse to acknowledge that some writing is bad. They will hide behind the argument that you should write for yourself, and that everyone has different tastes, so we can’t judge the value of anything.

While a comforting belief, it’s not true.

To understand why, let’s look at something everyone has experience in: eating food.

Nearly all of us can identify when a dish is overcooked, underseasoned, or made with the wrong ingredients. If you sub cumin for cinnamon in your cake, no one will want to eat it.

However, the majority of us can also identify when a dish was properly prepared but doesn’t match our palate. I get this a lot with Indian food because almost every restaurant has a different spice level; I know the food is good, but it burns my mouth and I don’t like it.

People would look at you like you were insane if you sniffed “well, that’s just your opinion, maybe others will like it” when presenting a writhing, glutinous mass of overcooked spaghetti with lumpy alfredo sauce. But, for some reason, we accept this mealy-mouthed apologism for bad writing.

Hiding behind these mollifying lies that “all writing is good and will find its audience” does not help you grow; it gives you an excuse to stagnate.

While this article (like everything on my blog) is only my opinion, I have removed anything I believe is not an objective measurement. None of this is meant to be about my specific preferences because it would not be fair to judge everyone by what I personally like.

Instead, I want to provide a jumping-off point to measure your (and other peoples’) writing so you can identify issues. Sometimes a project is hopeless and has to be thrown away, but other times, there is hope yet. Let’s get started.

The writing does not use good grammar and syntax.

This is the first and easiest way to solve any issues with your writing. Like I said in my post about writing rules, there are really only two that matter: your writing must communicate something, and it must do so in a way that other people can understand.

The first is spelling, which is the most basic level. We have standardized the language for ease of use, and it behooves you to use the generally accepted conventions if you want to be understood. Of course, language changes and new words come into use all the time; that’s okay. However, you want to have a common parlance with your audience. Spellchecker is your friend.

Grammar helps people organize your thoughts in their head, especially how different thoughts connect to one another. They also show how your story would be read aloud, which is helpful when developing audiobooks or simply using one’s internal voice.

Meanwhile, syntax is the order in which the words and phrases are presented; it’s a subset of grammar that has to do more with word order than punctuation. This is more fluid, but the way you organize your sentences and paragraphs will have an impact on how they are understood.

For example, if you want to build suspense, you’d put the most important element of a sentence last so that the reader wonders where this is headed before being walloped by the answer. The reverse also works depending on your needs.

There are dozens of different tools to fix your grammar and syntax; even barebones Notepad now has a spellchecker. While I do understand that many have learning disabilities like dyslexia that can make grammar challenging, there’s not much of an excuse anymore now that every word processor includes these tools.

You can even install something like Grammarly or ProWritingAid (my preferred tool) on your browser if you write on the web and find that Google Docs’ checker isn’t robust enough.

The writing is overly complicated.

This is easier to explain using a common example: unnecessary passive voice.

“Determination bent her lips into a grim smile that tightened her jaw.”

I’d really hope that you wouldn’t write this because it’s just … way too much. We’re getting to the point of purple prose; too many of these lines and you’ll make your readers hate you.

This is a perfect opportunity to use an adverb. Yes, that’s legal, as I point out in my post about overly strict writing rules. (Oh no, I used an adverb too!)

Yes, you can cut this down to just “She smiled grimly.” That’s it. Three words versus 12.

Why would we do this? Because her smiling grimly isn’t that damn important. We want to move onto something more essential, such as what she’s about to say next.

How many words you use for something will determine how important it feels to the reader. Little things, like a shrug or a sigh, do not need a whole sentence.

Plus, the context around this sentence should tell us whether she’s determined. Show us this through her behavior and language.

Overly complicated language makes your readers do more work than they need to. That turns a casual read into an exhausting slog, and you’re more likely to lose people along the way. It also sounds pretentious, like you’re showing off how well you can turn a simple sentence into a snorefest.

Thankfully, this is an easy fix, though tedious. Work with good beta readers and use a grammar tool like Grammarly or ProWritingAid. Over time, you’ll be able to see the problems yourself and remove it from your writing before you even finish the draft.

The audience is not a priority.

In other words, the author is more interested in showing off than connecting with and entertaining readers.

We see this annoying push-pull when fanfic writers engage with authors, where fanfic writers cannot get out of the mindset that they are writing just for themselves.

Of course fanfic is just for you – it’s a hobby, a way to make yourself happy. But published fiction needs to keep others in mind, both to find the right audience and to keep people reading.

How does one know when a work is wholly self-indulgent? Here are some little signs.

The author goes on irrelevant infodumps to show off arcane knowledge they have, like how different wavelengths look underwater, instead of just using the knowledge. They have to be sure you know how smart they are!

In fantasy, these infodumps will be about things like transit systems, politics, economies, geographies, and so on that aren’t relevant to the current plot.

For slightly more advanced writers, their characters will spout educational rants so the author can integrate this knowledge, even when it makes no sense to do so. Sometimes this is okay if the character themselves is Like That; I have a character like that in the latter part of the Eirenic Verses. It’s not okay if every single character does this all the time.

They incessantly reference other books, famous philosophers, and so on to show you that they are well-read.

The author tells you everything about the main character, adding long rants about their internal world and how they perceive what’s going on. This often takes the place of action because the author really wants you to like MC.

There’s a lot of purple prose so the author can show their mastery over language. This ignores the fact that readers want to understand the story, not ooh and aww over your fancy sentences.

The main character is a Mary Sue who always gets what they want, often in ways that make absolutely no sense. Empress Theresa is perhaps the ultimate example of this phenomenon.

In fantasy, the author makes it a point to use made-up words for things that exist in our world. Or they make up an entire language and constantly reference it.

In scifi, the author has to explain how all the different mechanical things work, how worlds interact, the interstellar politics, because they want you to see how much they have thought about their book.

In real-world fiction, they jump back and forth between languages in a very artificial way to remind you that the main character is bilingual.

While you are writing, you must always ask yourself why something is important. Does a character slipping into another language tell us something about them? Does the reader need to know about exchange rates between economies? Is your tidbit about different shark species actually going to come into play, or are you just showing off?

Readers do not really care about you, the author. While they are reading, they want to imagine that these things really happened to someone; you should not exist to them. Thinking about the author breaks immersion.

Of course your writing has ‘you’ all over it, in the way you phrase things or the types of scenes you write or the locations you use. There are horses and caves in my books because I like those things. Two characters have near-death experiences by drowning because I almost drowned when I was younger.

But ideally, the reader won’t think about why I’d do that when they’re reading because they’re too immersed. If they are thinking about that, then I have failed.

The story does not have a purpose.

This refers back to the first of my two writing rules: you must have something to communicate. You’re not required to have some overarching theme if you don’t want, but there has to be some reason for the story.

Sometimes that meaning is a human condition you want to explore, an experience of your own you want to process through someone else, or a plot that you think will intrigue other people.

Each of the books in the Eirenic Verses series has a plot, but it also has a specific purpose.

9 Years Yearning is a teenage drama that introduces us to the world and characters in a low-stakes setting, building rapport. Pride Before a Fall demonstrates High Poetry and shows more of the culture while depicting how you can love someone and hate them at the same time.

Saint Luridalr and the Peony Phoenix is a lore dump for those who are interested in the background of the culture. Lastly, Funeral of Hopes is a story about complicated grief and why it hurts to lose an abusive parent, even if you hate them.

There are thousands of reasons you might write original fiction, but the ultimate goal must be this: to share with others. Otherwise, don’t publish.

The plot does not progress organically.

We see this often in younger writers, who usually have melodramatic plots. The writer thinks of a super cool plot twist, and they plop it on in without any build-up or even any relevance.

Of course, we want to have awesome scenes. I have a good fighting scene in every single book because I have military characters and it wouldn’t make sense for them not to show off at least once. But – and here’s the key thing – I have integrated them in a way that makes sense. They’re not in there for no reason.

Even in Pride Before a Fall, where Orrinir goes and spars with his buddy Sagremor in an otherwise low-stakes story, there is a reason for it: he’s mad at his husband and wants to go cool off at his favorite bar. That makes sense for his character, and it has ramifications later.

Every time you think of a really cool scene, ask yourself whether this is plot-relevant. If not, maybe you can store that scene for another book in the series or another book entirely.

Learning self-discipline, including in what scenes you include, is crucial. Delayed gratification will serve you much better than just throwing things in because you like them and for no other reason.

How to use bad writing to improve

All writers want to be good writers – or they want to be bad enough writers that people pay attention.

I’d encourage you to veer toward the “good writer” section.

I like to do an exercise I call Good Book, Bad Book. I’ll read a beautifully written book that I adore; these are usually the ones that you see referenced in my Monday Missive newsletter, where I send out a new book recommendation every week.

But then I’ll read a bad book. A really bad one. Usually it’s a short bad one because I can’t handle too much cringe at my big age. And, sorry, but it’s usually a self-published one.

While I’m reading a book I think is bad, I mentally note all the things I hate about it; sometimes I even take written notes, too. This could be things like introducing too many characters at once, abrupt flashbacks used as trauma porn, or stilted dialogue.

Then, I workshop solutions. If you’re more philanthropic than I usually am, you’ll take on beta reading for someone else while noting all these issues in a respectful way. Please be kind.

Why is it important to read other peoples’ bad writing? You’re not emotionally attached to it, so you have more distance from the work and won’t be offended by criticism.

Most importantly, when you see something you hate in another book, you’ll be on the alert for it in your own work. It’s one thing for me to tell you what makes writing bad, another to experience that annoyance firsthand.

I can’t stress enough how much this has helped me: way more than any writing manual or class. It’s a type of experiential learning that really hammers home the lessons I’ve been taught.

If you’d like to condense all this work into one big lesson, please consider buying the book How Not to Write a Novel. Not only do the authors give carefully crafted, concrete examples of bad writing, but they also explain why these things don’t work right afterward. While some of the examples are a little dated, most still hold true today. Good writing is timeless, after all.

I say “buy” not borrow because I promise you’ll want to read it again after a while, just to see how much you’ve improved. A paperback copy is perfect for that.

We have to stop coddling peoples’ feelings and insisting that there are no true measurements of quality. But, now that I have ripped everything apart, let me state something very important, very clearly.

Every writer has gone through a period where they wrote shitty stuff.

They only got better because they acknowledged that something was wrong with it and learned how to fix their mistakes.

If you want to succeed, please stop basing your self-worth on how well you write. I know that many writers, including myself, begin identifying so strongly with this label that we feel any critique is an attack on us as a person.

Not true. Your writing is something you do, not something you are. Being told that your writing needs work is no different than being told that your cake has a strange cumin tang. Criticism may hurt, but it’s usually nothing personal.