Jennifer Crusie | Argh Ink | Blog

Once again The Dish shows the way to a great blog, in this case Joel Stickley’s wickedly good bad writing blog, How To Write Badly Well. Stickley also writes the Who Writes This Crap blog that calls out bad writing in the real world, but the genius of the HTWBW blog is the skill with which he reproduces the mistakes the clumsy bad writer makes, taking it to the limit of snarky yet accurate absurdity. His first post is, fittingly, the classic bad beginning:

Begin your novel with the protagonist getting out of bed and seeing that it is raining outside, which perfectly mirrors his life
Jake opened his eyes and heard the rain battering against the outside of the glass window. Well, he thought grimly, it’s raining outside, and it’s certainly raining in my soul, which is about as inside as you can get.
It had only been seventeen days since he had lost his job and been dumped by his girlfriend, all of which made him very sympathetic without actually having to establish him as a character. Ever since that fateful day, he had been hearing the drip drip drip of his hopes (raindrops) and aspirations (hailstones) tumbling down onto the corrugated iron roof of his memory before disappearing forever down the drain of missed opportunities.

That’s expert writing, for you. Awful, awful stuff, but expert awful. Then there’s “Always Use a Thesaurus,” “Describe Every Character in Minute Detail,” and my personal favorite “Create Subplots That Bear No Relation to the Main Story.” Oh, just go read the whole blog. He’s only been doing it for six weeks so it won’t take you long unless you go back to read the posts again, which you will. The ants and the aunts are worth several passes for the detail alone.

Joel Stickley: The best bad writer ever.