What is “Bad Writing?” (And How Can We Avoid It?)

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

"Bad writing" means different things to different readers.

We writers notice bad writing far more easily than readers, because we know the rules. For us, the writing is critical, but for a reader, it’s more about the story.

Readers don’t care how the sausage is made as long as it tastes good. And “good” is very subjective.

No matter what genre you write, I bet you can name a few huge, mega-bestsellers you feel are badly written. Every genre has them. And they drive us crazy as writers because “writers must write well” is drilled into our heads by everyone in the writing and publishing industry.

In one way it’s true—we should strive to write well to be successful.

In another way it’s not—a fantastic story that resonates with readers will trump “good writing” every time.

And this is when the serious hair pulling starts. It’s such a contradiction that “badly written books” with good stories sell. It goes against everything we’re taught, and makes us crazy (and a little depressed) when we run across it.

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So what exactly is bad writing?

This will change depending on who you ask, but for me, “bad writing” is anything that yanks a reader out of a story and prevents them from enjoying the book.

This can take many, many forms, from technical skills to storytelling abilities. Some readers are turned off by:

• Bland characters
• Slow plots
• Too-complex sentence construction
• Too-simple sentence construction
• Grammatical errors and typos
• Too much description
• Not enough description
• The wrong kind of description

And the list goes on and on. This is why different people will have wildly different views on the same novel. It’s why a manuscript will get rejected by ten editors but sell to the eleventh. It’s why one beta reader rips apart your book while another praises it on every page.

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Reading and writing are so very subjective. What one person considers bad writing another person loves.

What’s interesting, is that readers are far more forgiving than those in the industry—writers, agents, editors, reviewers, etc. What bothers a writer doesn’t even blip on a reader’s radar.

My family is full of voracious readers who read across all genres. I’m the only writer, and I’ve gained a lot of insights by listening to them describe the novels they’ve read.

My father once recommended a series to me and said, “The first hundred pages are really slow, but after that it picks up.”

I don’t know about you guys, but there’s no way I’m waiting a hundred pages for a story to start. A novel gets three chapters from me—tops. Ruthless, yes, but I have too many novels I want to read to spend time on those that don’t grab me right away. But my father didn’t care that this book started slowly. He liked the idea enough to stick with the entire series—and by this author’s sales numbers—so did a lot of other readers.

My sister also loved an author whose book I never read past the first chapter. When I asked her if X, Y, and Z bothered her, she shrugged and said no. After I’d mentioned them, she said she could see the flaws, but she hadn’t given them any thought while she was reading. She didn’t see what I, as a writer, saw. Or care.

On the flip side, my mother told me of a book she put down because it was just “too hard to read.” The author had included lots of newspaper clippings and snippets from other sources outside the narrative, and she found it exhausting. She was there for the story (which she thought was a fascinating premise), but the book got in its own way stylistically and she gave up.

I’d guess many of you have similar stories and have had similar conversations with your own non-writer friends and families. 

The more we know about the process and what “good writing” is supposed to be, the more “bad writing” bothers us.

How do we deal with bad writing? 

We ignore it.

Now, I’m not saying we write badly and ignore what we’ve learned, but there are simply too many factors that go into what makes a book “good” to worry about them all. 

Our energy is better spent on writing the best book we can, using the best skills we posses. It’s the only control we really have, because there’s no telling what books a reader will love. 

The more we stress over making every single word perfect, the more likely the story itself will suffer.

Fine, then how do we avoid bad writing in our own work? 

A baseline professional skill is, of course, important regardless, but where that line falls is more flexible. But after years and years of seeing readers rave about “badly written books,” I’ve realized a few things often trump technical writing skill. Such as:

1. Tell a fantastic story.

Offer a compelling tale with lots of unpredictable story questions that need answers, and readers will usually enjoy the book. I think a lot of well-written books fail because there’s nothing original about them. Sure, they hit all the right technical marks, but they lack originality or unpredictability. If readers can figure out what’s going to happen before it does, they story feels boring.

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2. Resonate with readers.

If the characters and story resonate with readers, and they lose themselves in that world and that character’s problems, they’ll love our book. 

Reading is escapism and wish fulfillment, which is why I feel Twilight did so well. A perfectly average and unremarkable girl who was unique and special to someone fabulous and larger than life, and he told her how amazing she was and whisked her away to a exciting world filled with adventures. 

No matter what you think about Meyers’ writing skill or how she executed her story, that is a dream we’ve all had at one point. It resonates with the self-doubting and lonely teen in all of us. Meyers connected to readers in a way that’s universal.

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3. Engage the reader and make them care.

Regardless of the genre, engaging readers in the tale and making them care will keep them reading.

Maybe solving the puzzle and learning the answer makes them love a story, even if they don’t care about other aspects. Or falling in love with a character makes them care, and what that character does is unimportant. It could be simply exploring a fascinating world engages them and they don’t care what happens as long as they get to wander through that world. 

Whatever it is, something about the book compels readers to get on board and lose themselves.

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Do all three of these things at once, and the odds of a book clicking with readers and taking off go way up. 

Tell a great story that resonates with readers and makes them care. 

Easier said than done, I know. And trust me, I get just as frustrated as the next writer when I see a book I couldn’t finish hit the bestseller lists and win all the awards. It’s disheartening for sure, but we can try to look past the frustration to understand why that book did so well. 

Read the reviews and see what readers are saying. What’s working for them, what resonated with them? Use the good feedback of bad books to make your books better and hit those all-important reader buttons.

Bad writing might hurt a book, but bad storytelling will kill it. Make sure you're focusing on the right thing to best serve your novel.

What do you consider “bad writing?”

*Originally published November 2015. Last updated March 2023.

If you're looking for more to improve your craft (or a fun fantasy read), check out one of my writing books or novels:

In-depth studies in my Skill Builders series include Understanding Conflict (And What It Really Means), and Understanding Show Don't Tell (And Really Getting It). My Foundations of Fiction series includes Plotting Your Novel: Ideas and Structure, a self-guided workshop for plotting a novel, and the companion Plotting Your Novel Workbook, and my Revising Your Novel: First Draft to Finished Draft series, with step-by-step guides to revising a novel. 

Janice Hardy is the award-winning author of the teen fantasy trilogy The Healing Wars, including The Shifter, Blue Fire, and Darkfall from Balzer+Bray/Harper Collins. The Shifter, was chosen for the 2014 list of "Ten Books All Young Georgians Should Read" from the Georgia Center for the Book. It was also shortlisted for the Waterstones Children's Book Prize (2011), and The Truman Award (2011).

She also writes the Grace Harper urban fantasy series for adults under the name, J.T. Hardy.

She's the founder of Fiction University and has written multiple books on writing, including Understanding Show, Don't Tell (And Really Getting It), Plotting Your Novel: Ideas and Structure, and the Revising Your Novel: First Draft to Finished Draft series.

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