They say if you want to be a good writer, you have to read a lot. The ‘they’ who usually say things like this tend to be a tad vague, though, when it comes to telling us what to read for writing improvement. For instance, do the trashy action novels I fill a good chunk of my free time with fill the bill? You know those books – lone wolf ex-special forces operators single handedly saving the world from things like rogue nations, international terrorists, mad scientists, that sort of thing. I would not have thought so, but lately I’ve come to believe they can.

​The one thing common to these novels, and probably other genre fiction as well, is that they are so embarrassingly easy to write badly. Examples of what not to do when writing a book fairly abound, glaringly in many cases, and thus may serve as potential learning opportunities for other authors.

​One of the first things to jump out at me from a bad book are the characters, beginning with their names. You would think even a mediocre writer could come up with better character names. Instead, we get ridiculous, Biff Savage-type monikers (not one I actually read anywhere) to follow along through explosions, gunfire and the odd snuggle from an equally lame named supporting heroine. On the character development side, any resemblance to persons either living or dead, or even homo sapiens, challenges suspension of disbelief beyond science fiction or fantasy.

​Then, there is the dialogue. An area that should be relatively easy to get right, since those writers are presumably surrounded by dialogue every day of their lives. Yet this, too, somehow evades translation to paper (or, more accurately, computer file). Characters should be able to talk to each other in books the way real people do off the page. Real people in the kind of stressful situations action characters frequently find themselves in would speak and act accordingly. A bit of gallows repartee under fire is one thing; a full-on vaudeville routine, however, is something else again.

​But the biggest cringe of bad writing, in my opinion, is Bulwer-Lytton syndrome. Now, don’t get me wrong: I like writing long sentences as much as the next guy. More, even. I draw the line, however, at loading so much unnecessary detail into my sentences that, in order to find the original subject and predicate, you’d have to call out a search party. This detail overload is one of my biggest criticisms of badly written books.

​From the standpoint of getting published, I can understand fluffing the word count a little.Publishers may be more interested in a hundred-thousand word manuscript than an eighty-thousand word one. Readers, however, do not live by word count alone. Piling on so much unnecessary detail detracts proportionately from the book’s overall readability. Piling on excessive details in order to sound either more intelligent or more talented than the writer really is never works.

​Reading prose like this helps keep me honest as I apply pen to paper and, by their negative example, may indeed help make my own writing just a little more palatable.

What’s your experience?

Joel Bresler is the author of

Bottomless Cups

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