The bad writer's tripping point

I received a fascinating email the other day from, to put it politely, a strange person who fancies himself a writer. He was ranting about someone who stole his novel idea more than a decade ago. Evidently this is a long-running concern and he constantly emails people about it, claiming to have new proof which will finally break open the conspiracy keeping him down.

I'm not sure why he decided to gift me with his rant--he probably spams people around the world with his cries for attention. But if his email is any indication of his writing ability, he ought to beg people to steal his ideas. Because that's the only way he'll ever receive any attention as a writer.

I mean, damn, you couldn't even read this email. Each paragraph was dense and convoluted, with non sequiturs assaulting bad similes and analogies until you wondered if this was written by those mythical monkeys banging on a typewriter. Except a million of them hadn't produced Hamlet--they'd merely caused me to stop reading this person's email.

Much has been made of late about tipping points, that moment when a "previously rare phenomenon becomes rapidly and dramatically more common." While this term is most often applied to larger sociological concepts like the stock market and mob mentality, I believe it also applies to individuals and how they read.

Call it the tripping point, for the moment when someone trips over too much bad writing and refuses to read a sentence more.

For example, when I opened that person's email I was initially curious as to why this fellow believed someone had stolen his novel idea. While such occurrences are rare, they are the stuff of writer nightmares, so I decided to read on. Never mind that the first paragraph of his email didn't make a lot of sense--I was determined to discover what was going on here.

But then I tripped over the second poorly organized paragraph. Irritated, I scanned the email but didn't see the information I was searching for. As a result I refused to read any more and deleted the rant.

Readers will tolerate bad writing only up to a certain point. A few typos won't doom your story with a reader, but add in too many grammatical flip-flops and the moment quickly comes when readers drop your story. If you have set up a beautiful character in your novel but have her do something strikingly out of character, a reader may throw your book across the room and never return--even if the reader has invested hours into reading your novel. Likewise if your story loses its internal logic, or ignores basic elements of plot structure or pacing.

While I'm focusing on the tripping point in fiction writing, the concept applies to all areas of writing--be it a short story, a novel, an email, an essay, a report, or a grocery list. That's why one of the best ways to improve your writing is to reread your work as if you are a new reader approaching these words for the first time. Try to push any background knowledge or information on the subject from your mind and read your writing with fresh eyes.

Anyone else ever encountered a tripping point in someone's writing? What made your throw down that book or delete an email and refuse to read any more?

Note: This post was edited in response to feedback from several readers.

Comments

[Theliteraryomnivore.wordpress.com]

The third improperly used "it's" or "its", as well as "you're" or "your". (It really peeves me; sound it out in your head, for the love of God!)

Ignoring internal logic is also a tipping point for me.

[Jason Sanford]

Hard to argue with any of those.

[Andrew]

Even a hint of deus ex machina causes me to engage in extreme story throwing.

[Jessica Schneider]

Sounds like the kind of emails Dan gets. Are you sure that email wasn't meant for him? Ha ha.

[S. F. Murphy]

Everytime the writer starts to preach at me, that is usually when I throw a book or story across the room. This is the most common tripping point.

Another tripping point is when someone uses cliched depictions of soldiers, veterans, law enforcement and EMS personnel. It seems to me that the two tripping points are often tied to one another.

A final tripping point, normally the case with alternate histories like The Lucky Strike, is when the writer is more interested in scoring political points than they are with building an alternate history that might actually have some basis in historical research. The greatest crime of these is usually the crime of presentism, where someone from the present day tries to impose their moral interpretation of a historical event upon the people of the past.

That said, getting preached at is probably the worst in my book. It is the main reason I find most science fiction to be unreadable today.

Respects,
S. F. Murphy
On the Outer Marches

[Kellye Parish]

Exposition dump. Definitely one of my biggest pet peeves and something I try to sniff out with intent to kill in my own writing. The author is not supposed to tell the story, the *story* is supposed to tell the story.

Murphy - I am big into conflict theory and I love to read about social issues/politics in science fiction (among other things) but in relation to my first point, I don't want to "see" the author soapboxing. I want the theme to come through on the pages seamlessly and almost on a subconscious level.

Altogether though, my biggest pet peeve is a bad edit, and I'll give you a prime example with regards to a "big" name. Anne Rice quit letting her editor give her feedback after selling Queen of the Damned. (She pontificates on that decision here: http://www.annerice.com/sh_MessagesBeach2.htm )

In my opinion as an editor (and with no offense to her as a writer, because I understand the desire to have complete creative control over one's work) her books immediately started to decline in quality after that. Anne is an over-writer, and she really does need someone *else* to "kill her darlings". I've noticed this phenomenon with other big writers too as they nab more book deals and more creative control - they start to refuse editorial advice because they get a little too big for their britches, and the books suffer as a result.

In my office, the motto goes: No matter how great at revision you think you are, it ALWAYS helps to have a second pair of eyes.

I mean, Rice's books are still a thousand times better than most stuff that comes out of the slushpile and I have most of the older ones that she's written, but they've lost the clean slick feel from the first three novels that she put out, and I'd mark it down to sub-optimal edits. Of course, she's made a gazillion dollars, so her editor is not going to call her out on it.

In any case, If I read into a story for a few pages and immediately feel the urge to grab a red pen or a blue pencil, I won't read further. Too many books, too little time.

[Dylan Fox]

Being deliberately kept in the dark by the author is a huge turn-off for me. I don't mind questions and strange situations being set up, I don't mind being tempted and mis-directed, it's when the author goes out of their way to ensure that I don't have a clue who is who or what is going on. I'm going to say it because I'm thinking it--The Playmaker, by Thomas Keneally. Chapter after chapter of being pointed at by the author and laughed at for not having a clue what's going on, when, or to whom. I had to study it for A level, and I'll still tell people it's the worst book ever.

Kellye: I agree wholly with writers needing editors. J. K. Rowling is another classic example. Prisoner of Azkaban was a very tense, enjoyable book. Goblet of Fire was a sprawling mess that should have been a third of the size. Order of the Phoenix more-so. I stopped reading after that.

As for the writer being a 'nutcase'... It certainly doesn't help people with mental health issues to lump anyone who doesn't follow what you understand as the proscribed rules of social interaction in with people who are suffering from genuine mental health problems. It perpetuates the idea that all people with mental health issues are unstable, raving lunatics who shouldn't be engaged with or have their opinions taken seriously. If the writer does have mental health problems (they might, this might be the symptom of a larger problem) then you're dismissing without trying to understand, sticking a 'nutcase' label on them and refusing to have any more to do with them. That leads to the situation where those who have mental health issues can't be listened to, can't be taken seriously, and aren't really thought of as 'people' in the same way 'sane' people are.

Of course, the big problem with all that is our language doesn't really offer any alternatives. What else would you call this guy? They don't understand the rules of 'normal' society and are fixated on a single idea. I guess the problem with calling someone a 'nutcase' is you're saying, 'I don't get where this guy is coming from so I'm not going to bother to try, and you shouldn't either', with a possible side order of, 'and let's have a laugh at them, too'.

Sorry for the huge post, especially in light of Murphy's comments about preaching :)

[Authorgmkah04]

I'm coming to a t(r)ipping point with Brad Thor's The Apostle to be honest. I won't get in to criticisms, but needless to say he does not deserve to be a bestseller with his writing style and I have read a lot of much better thrillers out there

[K. A. Laity]

The first page of Joe Hill's Heart Shaped Box has a supposed 17th or 18th century witch's 'actual' confession. However, neither Hill nor his editor nor his proofreader seems to know the difference between first person and second person verb tense in early Modern English.

[Kimberlynn Shaffer-Silva]

I find that when a writer misses a word, or uses TO, TOO, TWO or YOU, YOUR, YOU'RE incorrectly I get stuck right there. No matter how I try, I just can't seem to get my mind back into the story and away from the mistake.

[Jason Sanford]

I hear you, Kimberlynn. I think that is also one of the occupational hazards of being a copy editor. Once you learn how to search for mistakes in a manuscript, you are forever after finding mistakes in everything.