Oct 2024
12 / 34
Oct 2024
Nov 2024
BellaTheCow
Oct '24

Well I say false only because I’ve observed that it isn’t the story itself that is ever considered “bad” rather it’s the way that it is conveyed (as in perhaps poor grammer or failure to adequately describe the situation or subject of the story ) that might( idk if this is always the case) lead a reader to say that a story is considered “bad”.

Please Note: this is my own opinion and it will change according to any new information I might find out about this subject to be correct. Thank you for your understanding :blush:

bulgariansumoRegular
Oct '24

I feel like what counts as 'bad art' (including writing, music, etc.) depends on if it fulfils what the writer wants it to. The standards for good writing are most lenient when the writer is writing for themselves, and less so when the writer is writing in order to attract an outside audience/sales/etc.

I was going to try to make an argument that there's no such thing as bad writing if you're writing for yourself, but you can still write something you don't like, so... [shrug]

Lensing
Oct '24

Art is too complex for simple categories.

Try to define the words good / bad and you will find out that
1) not easy 2) doesn´t work as a general category

Tubacabra
Oct '24

I just looked up the definition of good and this popped up. Not sure if the example sentence was supposed to be ironic, or if they actually thought this was proper English.

(of language) with correct grammar and pronunciation.
"she speaks good English"

DokiDokiTsuna
Oct '24

I...think this is grammatically correct, though. ^^; It's just informal in a sort of antiquated way...people don't really use 'good' in certain phrases anymore, but it doesn't make it wrong.

Like, if you break it down: "she speaks English" is grammatically correct. So adding an adjective to 'English' shouldn't break the sentence. "She speaks British English", for example, is fine. So "She speaks good English" should also be technically fine.
It feels like 'good' inherently describes the way 'she' speaks, which makes it feel wrong; because you're supposed to say that as "she speaks well". But 'good' is actually the qualifier of 'English', as in 'good English'. To give another example, "she bakes good bread" is also fine.

Maybe someday 'good' will fall further out of favor, and a sentence like that will break convention so hard you could make a case that it's grammatically incorrect. But I don't think we're there just yet.

This is actually a really interesting distinction...so if the way the writer describes the subjects of the story and the situations in the story isn't the 'story itself'...what IS the story itself??

All that's left outside of the telling would be the vague idea behind it...and I think the claim 'there's no such thing as a bad story idea' might actually have some merit. Like, when I say 'anything can work if you make it work'; that's basically the same thing, right?

KevinReijnders
Oct '24

There's absolutely such a thing as bad writing. Writing, much like any craft, has a set set of techniques that make the writing work. It's as much a technical craft as it is a creative one.

That said, bad writing is the current buzzword for when someone doesn't like a thing and wants to pretend they know what they're talking about.

cherrystark
Oct '24

Art is subjective so everyone's going to have different definitions of what "good" and "bad" are. Most people tend to accept bad execution as a standing definition of "bad writing".

For example, I'm pretty vocal about my dislike for the first person POV. It's trendy and very overdone. I don't like reading it because the female MCs typically tend to read like spoiled, bratty teenage girl and the male MCs tend to read like women doing fake male voices in my head. It's not fun. I also don't like the trope "enemies to lovers" because writers don't understand the trope. But if I found a well executed first person POV, enemies to lovers novel - I'd read it.

vfaqvrf
Oct '24
2

(post withdrawn by author, will be automatically deleted in 24 hours unless flagged)

NickRowler
Oct '24

I think there is writing which people call bad and might pick apart to point out every little flaw. Yet there are tons of people who still enjoy it. They don’t care about smaller issues about the writing because maybe there is a larger charm about the it that captures the interest of tons of people.

However, there is writing which is objectively bad. It is not well written and anyone who does enjoy it is more for ironic reasons. I think of things like The Room, Cool Cat, Star Wars Holiday Special, or anything by Neil Breen.

BellaTheCow
Oct '24

The story itself I believe are the actual events and subjects being described and it is the way that it is described that can make a story become considered “bad” or “good”. Therefore that is why I have come to the conclusion thus far that there is no such thing as a bad story idea rather just failure to convey the idea properly.

So, again, not a bad story, just maybe a difficulty on communicating the idea is all that I’ll consider when considering a story “bad” or needing improvement.

Edit:
Of course in the case where the grammar is not correct because the author is new to the English language then all grammar errors are immediately excused in my case because I can only imagine how difficult it must be to write in an entirely different language. :scream:

Note: again, this is my opinion and it will change according to what is eventually found to be correct moving forward. Thank you for your understanding.

BellaTheCow
Oct '24

Omg! I actually didn’t really realize what @DokiDokiTsuna was trying to convey to me. This is an excellent point @DokiDokiTsuna :sob: of course it’s true that the context of the story would change if told a different way. My apologies for the misunderstanding and not considering this truth earlier. :joy:

Again, my opinion changes with what is found to be correct of this subject as I am still learning much. :blush:

@DokiDokiTsuna @BreeBaxter

cherrystark
Oct '24

To be fair, that's why I said execution! :sweat_smile: The "trend" right now is to alternate POV between your leads. As a reader, I've always had trouble with the sudden shifting of voices. The story then gets even more muddied when the writer starts throwing in the POV of random side characters. With enemies-to-lovers, they almost always hate each other because of some over exaggerated misunderstanding or some generic rule like "We have the Capulets because we're Montagues".

The writer could shift their storytelling execution and explore the same story just in a different way. Like imagine a modern day adaptation Romeo and Juliet told from the cast's collected social media posts, private diaries, and videos stored on the cloud. It's still the same story, it's just executed in an interesting way instead of defaulting to a basic execution.

2DLenzy
Oct '24

Whoa, woah WOAH! That's a summation of my Season 3 XD

aquashark
Oct '24

judging weather writing is good or not is impossible to do, bad writing does not exists however things like lazy writing or simple writing do. However lazy writing and simple writing isn't necessarily bad, sometimes simple pieces of writing are easy to understand and follow then complex writing is. On the other hand lazy writing (as much as it can be avoided) doesn't make the writing bad either.

however there are times were you can definitely say that the writing is bad and the way you tell is by checking the amount of plot holes a story has. If a story manages to amass a ton of plot holes then the writing is basically like Swiss cheese, it may taste good in some parts. But there is less to consume. That's why i personally fill in all my plot holes as much as I can.

i guess the entire point is that writing is only bad when the story is only good at "some parts" i want to read stories that may have some iffy episodes or arcs but overall is good.