McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
Show the Best of your Worst Writing
konstantine23:
I won't contribute, but please keep this up. It seriously made my whole friggin day fun. ;D . Seriously. The Whole. Friggin. Day.
Josh:
I'm going to post a worst-written line that I heard read at a conference...I don't remember who originally wrote it, otherwise I'd give credit...
"His muscles bulged and twitched like a hoard of hamsters all humping one another beneath a tightly stretched canvas."
And there you have it.
King of De Nile:
Of course, for really, truly bad writing, there's no topping "The Eye of Argon." Any story that can consistently have you read a sentence and still have no idea what it's saying is gold in the "Best of the Worst" category.
LizW65:
Here's a link to The Eye of Argon if anyone wants to take a look:
http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~susan/sf/eyeargon/eyeargon.htm
It truly is a "classic".
I believe the hamster line was a runner-up in the Bulwer-Lytton contest (no idea what year, though.)
Yeratel:
If you grew up learning good writing habits, striving for clarity and conciseness, and following The Elements of Style, then it's hard to throw it all out the window and write bad without a deliberate effort.
The defenestration of good style, good taste, good grammar, good spelling, and good sense just comes naturally to some folks, though, as illustrated by many examples posted on the various fanfic web sites. There may be the occasional nugget in there someplace, but it's unfortunately hidden in a vast slush pile of mostly adolescent drivvel. The Eye of Argon is definitely a gold nugget.
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