: Re: Traits of Bad Writers - Analysing Popular Authors I realise that this question can fall in the scope of personal opinion but I am looking for something concrete. Very often, not only on this

@Phylliss352

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I recently read a good article called "Teaching Bad Writing" by Paul Williams on how to get students to recognize it, not to mention emotionally accept that their favourite authors lack certain qualities.

One of the suggestions is to study an author's style and then emulate and exaggerate it. As you try to capture the nuances of their voice, he says, you get a sense of what works and what doesn't.

He also offers the advice that teachers relinquish authority over what good and bad writing is, and prefer "effective" vs. "ineffective". J.K. Rowling is obviously an effective writer, accomplishing what she had in mind better than most people with the same aim — even if writers and critics of literary fiction find her craftsmanship lacking.

As for concrete criteria, I'll offer some speculative ones based on writing, editing, and teaching. Generally ineffective writing...

Lacks simplicity. Overwrought writing is wearying. Don't be Amanda McKittrick Ros with her "faultless fabrics of flaxen fineness". And if a writer has trouble distinguishing that phraseology from Shakespeare's, he should probably focus on strengths other than poeticness.
Lacks subtlety. Being too on-the-nose with your message alerts the reader to the didacticism and they dismiss it. Conveying a message indirectly, making it slightly hard to grasp, or telling it through imagery tend to make it hit harder.
Lacks clarity. On the other hand, writing that deliberately obfuscates its meaning is also unattractive. (That said, critics often warm to a challenge. Take Ulysses, for example.)
Lacks specificity. Writing about the end of the world is often less compelling than writing about the breakdown of a family. This is a point Williams makes.
Lacks originality. This ties into the specificity point in that specific stories are more likely to be unique. Also, the use of your own clear voice tends to add uniqueness. For this reason, derivative works can be original. Wide Sargasso Sea is perhaps more original than Jane Eyre.
Lacks a voice. Speaking of voice, if it's impossible to make a good guess as to the author of a given piece of writing (even with natural language processing techniques!), it's probably weak. Note that this criterion demonstrates the value of using "effective" rather than "good". Sometimes nonfiction is better when the author disappears behind the message, for example.
Lacks intentionality. A poetry professor once told me that the semicolon has no place in poetry. We've all heard similar injunctions: Avoid to be, avoid adverbs, avoid repetitive sentence structures, etc. But the truth is that the only rule about such things is: Know what you're doing and why. Writing that doesn't come out of such a knowledge appears random. Intent precedes control, which precedes style.
Lacks a guiding vision. This is my own weakest area. I can write lovely sentences that don't seem to add up to anything, or anything of value. Note that overuse of subtlety can make it hard to tell whether a piece has no guiding vision or it's just hard to see. But writing that has a vision, disguised or perceptible, will cohere and feel right. This is probably the aspect that rewriting changes most.
Lacks an ear for the natural. Even though we don't write as we speak, somehow our prose can still ring false! This happens most often in dialogue. You must be able to say it out loud.
Lacks humour. Humour is not the same as comedy, but is the willingness to see the world as funny. Even in the most solemn situations one can have that. Also, the more serious the thing you need to say, the more appropriate it is to make the audience laugh first. Ineffective writing treats laughter as having no place in serious stories and vice versa.
Lacks beauty. This may be old-fashioned of me, but I always look for the phrase that makes me pause and reread, that lodges itself in my mind because it's worded so perfectly. A little edge of strangeness often contributes a great deal to beauty, as it does to humour (another way the two are cousins). "This was the most unkindest cut of all..."

Most of these qualities interact, and some are even in conflict — in which case we can add that ineffective writing lacks balance. But I hope this is a more or less comprehensive matrix you can apply to writing to help pinpoint what might make it "bad".

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