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Bad Writing

post #1 of 16
1/22/09 at 3:57am
Thread Starter 
LOL

http://www.scribd.com/doc/1110/When-...-becomes-funny
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post #2 of 16
1/22/09 at 1:31pm
Haha; I love this kind of stuff. My favorite was:, "The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't." It's almost zenlike. My second favorite was, "John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met."
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post #3 of 16
1/22/09 at 1:33pm
Those were almost all great! I really can't imagine most were written without intentional wit and irony....
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post #4 of 16
1/22/09 at 1:35pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Magician View Post
Those were almost all great! I really can't imagine most were written without intentional wit and irony....

The image of the body / Hefty bag analogy was extremely powerful. Seriously. Talk about a description that you can actually picture.
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post #5 of 16
1/22/09 at 1:36pm
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post #6 of 16
1/22/09 at 1:40pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by MetroStyles View Post
The image of the body / Hefty bag analogy was extremely powerful. Seriously. Talk about a description that you can actually picture.

Yeah, that one definitely provided an image. All that kept coming to mind, though, was that scene from Robocop where the ED-209 goes berzerk and shoots that guy in the boardroom. Yuck!

This doesn't at all compare to those above, but during my first teaching gig I had a middle school non-English student write "I have a brother. His name is Syoki and he is a good brother. He has a crab. Thank you." It cracked me up.
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post #7 of 16
1/22/09 at 1:41pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by rach2jlc View Post
Yeah, that one definitely provided an image. All that kept coming to mind, though, was that scene from Robocop where the ED-209 goes berzerk and shoots that guy in the boardroom. Yuck!

This doesn't at all compare to those above, but during my first teaching gig I had a middle school non-English student write "I have a brother. His name is Syoki and he is a good brother. He has a crab. Thank you." It cracked me up.

I hope he wasn't referring to the mollusk of decrepitude. Was he Thai?
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post #8 of 16
1/22/09 at 1:57pm
Russell Beland is my new favorite writer.
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post #9 of 16
1/22/09 at 2:20pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by MetroStyles View Post
I hope he wasn't referring to the mollusk of decrepitude. Was he Thai?

Haha; nah, she was Japanese. And as she told me later, her brother had one of those tiny little crabs you sometimes find in rivers as a pet.
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post #10 of 16
1/22/09 at 5:00pm
Awesome. I should compile a list of quotes from actually published (and some acclaimed) books I've read that are just plain awful. Most are business/technical writings, so it's understandable, but god they're just awful.
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post #11 of 16
1/22/09 at 6:28pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by dave View Post
Russell Beland is my new favorite writer.

I liked the description of the date who, in the movie of a girl's life, would be buried in the credits as "Second Tall Man".

Most of these are brilliant. If bad writing is writing that tries but fails to achieve a certain effect, most of these don't qualify.

I keep thinking of something like Wallace Stevens:

"None of them knew the color of the sky. Their eyes glanced level, and were fastened upon the waves that swept toward them. These waves were of the hue of slate, save for the tops, which were of foaming white, and all of the men know the colors of the sea. The horizon narrowed and widened, and dipped and rose, and at all times its edge was jagged with waves that seemed thrust up in points like rocks.

"Many a man ought to have a bath-tub larger than the boat which here rode upon the sea.These waves were most wrongfully and barbarously abrupt and tall, and each froth-top was a problem in small boat navigation...

"A seat in this boat was not unlike a seat upon a bucking bronco, and by the same token, a bronco is not much smaller. The craft pranced and reared, and plunged like an animal. As each wave came, and she rose for it, she seemed like a horse making a fence outrageously high. The manner of her scramble over these walls of water is a mystic thing, and, moreover, at the top of them were ordinarily these problems in white water, the foam racing down from the summit of each wave, requiring a new leap and a leap from the air. Then, after scornfully bumping a crest, she would slide and race, and splash down a long incline and arrive bobbing and nodding in front of the next menace."
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post #12 of 16
1/22/09 at 6:42pm
Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
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post #13 of 16
1/22/09 at 6:56pm
Haha I love this one:

He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.
Joseph Romm, Washington
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post #14 of 16
1/22/09 at 6:59pm
Those comments at the bottom are wonderful to read.
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post #15 of 16
1/22/09 at 8:34pm
I liked, "Her date was pleasant enough, but she knew that if her life was a movie this guy would be buried in the credits as something like 'Second Tall Man'" Sad and funny!
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