what makes writing "good" or "bad"?

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what makes writing "good" or "bad"?

..... there is a case for sentimentality being the thing that makes writing "bad" for want of a better word ... sentimentality conceals rather than reveals, obscures rather than enlightens ... saccharine and cliched ... it's the easy way out ...

Hitch
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I agree, Eric, IMHO was one of the finest writers of Haiku ever.
IFB
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surely writing is a CRAFT?
Emily Dubberley
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I reckon bad writing is the stuff that concentrates on form over expression, like the bloke who wrote an entire novel without using the letter 'e'. I mean, come on, what's the point? Although that would mean Ulysses was 'bad' writing (I hate the book but it would be arrogant to say it was bad writing given he has so many fans for some reason...) The other thing that marks out bad writing for me is poor characterisation, when you just don't care what happens to the characters because the author hasn't given them enough depth to make them interesting.
finn
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would that make prolific writers crafty ?
stormy_petrel
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Wonders who finn and hitch are .... but thats another discussion! I would offer that good writing is something that grabs me the minute I start reading, makes me eager to turn to the next page and leaves me wanting more at the end. It should also be easy to read and understandable without being 'Janet and John'. I think it also depends on the target audience. Jeffrey Archer, for instance, gets panned in this forum and elsewhere but, boy, does he have an audience! When I was at school back in the dark ages, using the three day week as an excuse for not doing any homework, a teacher once told me that it is harder to write as a journalist for the Sun/Mirror etc than for one of the broadsheets. This is true. Boris Johnson and Sion Simon (Spectator and Telegraph columnists) - excellent writers that they are - would lose the interest of the tabloid reader within 10 seconds. In the broadsheets you can ramble. In a tabloid the story must be told in concise short sentences. With punch. And a beginning. A middle. And end. In 3 column inches. I stumbled across something called the 'fog index' a while ago. This index measures how easy your work is to read and understand. Having thought my own writing was fairly simplistic and straightforward, I was shocked to discover that 80% of the population would struggle with the piece I tested. If anyone is interested in this I can probably dig up the url from the depths of this machine. I'm struggling to conclude my thought train here so I think I'll just leave it in mid-
Liana
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Stormy - If you could dig up the url, I'd be interested in this? Cheers Liana
Liana
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Ok, l found it already. Yes, yes, I know, Mrs. Impatient... Anyone else thats interested, the url is: http://tech-head.com/fog.htm
richardw
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artaud says that bad writing is born of the misconception that another person could conceivably want to read your work, without gain for themself. the good writing exists in a little folio that noone sees until after someone has died, or is published against their judgement. prose without vanity is the only clear prose. richard
Mississippi
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This one's a bit too intellectual for me. My idea of good writing is my name on a lottery winners cheque, preferably with lots of noughts on it. A classic example of less being more!
ivoryfishbone
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do you think that posting on here presupposes that one thinks other people will be interested in reading one's work? and if this is true then does that suggest that all writers who post on here are therefore bad?
Gabrielle
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I have no intention of getting philosophical here ( and anyway I couldn't even if I tried) but as far as I'm concerned writing is good if you like it. And if I write something and someone enjoys reading it, or I read something and enjoy reading it (for wahtever reason - it made me happy, it made me sad, it made me think, it made me vomit) then that was good writing. Prose without vanity is like life without sea bream ( or is it sea bass...whatever) And who is this Mr.R.Toad anyway? Did he live in Toad Hall?
Limpopo
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Hey Gabby, I like your style. I'm sick of all this pretentious crap. Who do all these poseurs think they're kidding? Most of 'em wouldn't know good writing if I did them some!
richardw
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pardon? poseurs? i'm tempted to unregister immediately at the suggestion! you can sue artaud directly, were it not for the small fact that he is dead. antoin had a good point when he said that the most true and uncoloured prose is without vanity. to argue otherwise is absurd. like it or not, everyone who publishes to abc or anywhere else does so out of a need for validation of worth, else why would they waste their time painstakingly cutting and pasting each story/poem into the little box?
Ganges
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Ahem Richard, Am I not right in assuming that the 'antoin' you refer to is actually Antoinette and in fact is all WOMAN? And just for the sake of argument, if her point about true and uncoloured prose being vanity free, and your contention that EVERYONE here publishes to gain validation, which I suggest is a form of vanity, then you are saying there is no true and uncoloured prose on the site. Do I detect the faint whiff of contradiction here? Or perhaps you really believe evrything here is crap!
missiroblia
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:oX
Ganges aka Miss...
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Missiroblia, :oX ? sorry, I'm a little slow please explain!
ivoryfishbone
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i think it is too simple to say "writing is good if you like it" ... it is akin to saying "i don't know anything about art but i know what i like" ... i'd like to know what it is about certain writing that makes it liked/good and what makes other writing disliked/bad ... i am also interested in what happens when a person studies a writer or work ... it's certainly been my experience to have disliked (intensely sometimes) a writer or work and then after having to study it have come to like it ... is that about coming to understand what is "good" about it? also are there certain bits of writing which are liked on first reading and do not stand up to scrutiny? instant gratification hits if you like ...
richardw
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not everything. antoin artaud. pay attention at the back.
fey
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stormy, looks like alphabetti spaghetti to me...
Mississippi
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OK, I'm standing in the corner with my hands on my head!
fey
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I can hardly ever understand anything I like. I contest the notion that Boris Johnson is a good writer. He's a plonker and he can't argue
richardw
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i got 11.6 for an old essay on faust. is that good or bad? as a hint, i would suppose the corollary for a bad result would be the tag "confusing" on the flyleaf :)
stormy-petrel
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Fey, I don't much like him either - he seems to be a relic from the past in a younger mans body - but I try not to let personal distaste colour my judgement. I used Johnson and Simon as examples because a) they were the first names that came to mind when I was thinking about broadsheet journo's (one from the left and one from the right - so this would not turn into a poltical piece) and b) I considered that they do know a bit about writing since they are ed and deputy ed of the spectator amongst other things. Bear in mind that I was talking about newspaper writing at the time and not novel writing / poetry. The fact that you disagree with me illustrates the point made in other threads about what is liked by one is not liked by another etc and also shows how hard it is to define 'good writing'. Could you expand your point about hardly ever understanding anything you like because I don't understand what you mean. regards
fey
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Oh no, this wasn't meant to get all serious. I don't think Boris Johnson is bad because he's from the right. I think he's bad because he can't carry a point through an arguament without dropping it and picking it up all covered in mud and unrecognisable. I prefer reading the views of people with whom I don't see eye to eye, because they make me think about what I think. Mississippi's pretension radar will be beeping now. Liking stuff I don't understand is because I'm neither very bright nor asiduous, so it's the easiest option. Please read the following in the manner of Alan Titchmarsh: It's more exciting in a jungle, with all the strange plants and sounds and smells than a clipped garden, even if your're lost in the jungle. On the other hand, sometimes if you see a garden which uses all the plants you would like to grow, but in a different way, that's inspiring, too
stormy petrel
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Dear fey, Sorry, my silly hat fell off for a moment. I was merely trying to justify my selection of Boris Boop. Don't keep doing yourself down. How can you say you are not very bright and use the word asiduous in the same sentence? I liked your analogy - thanks for explaining. The only problem is..... I can't do Alan Titchmarsh and it didn't quite have the same ring to it with the voice of a nasally David Coleman (REE - markable). I'm currently struggling through 'The Road To Notown' by Michael Foley. Very shortly it will join the Fahrenheit 451 club. I don't like having to reach for the dictionary every page, it destroys the flow. My guesses at the definition are usually way off the mark. His phraseology is complex and I keep having to re-read paragraphs. The man is a walking thesaurus. But I find it is spoiling what the cover describes as " A scurrilous, brilliantly satirical novel about the pretensions, hypocrisies and paranoia of the literary world and its hangers-on - novelists, poets, academics, passionate women and barking-mad eccentrics - and, for good measure, Northern Irish culteral conditioning, marital breakdown and the maelstrom that passes for family life." !!! I suppose that sentence alone should have put me off. It fails the fog index big time! Kinda describes the ABC forum come to think of it lol byeee
andrew pack
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Emily - the novel written without the letter 'e' was reviewed and acclaimed without anyone realising it was a lipogram. And the author Georges Perec also wrote some damn powerful stuff... It is difficult to get into this without just saying, it's good if I like it, and bad if I don't. How about - it's good if it makes you want to rush up to people and read chunks of it aloud. It's good if you finish it and feel angry that there isn't more of it. It's good if you go to the bookshop the next day to see what else the author's done. As to why one piece is good and another bad - if there wasn't a mystery to that, it wouldn't be art. Coke and Nike would be manufacturing novels in sweatshops. Speaking of which, may I recommend Naomi Klein's No Logo to anyone interested in reading non-fiction once in a while.
Emily Dubberley
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Really! That's kind of clever then. Maybe I should just shut up and talk about stuff I've read ;-) What does lipogram mean? (I'm assuming it doesn't just mean 'novels written without the lettter 'e' cos it's usage would be fairly limited) It's a great word. LOVE your description of good writing - reminds me of a poem (written as prose I think...) by (maybe) Roger Mcgough but quite possibly someone else entirely, that talks about good writing going screaming down the street ripping its clothes off. Or something. Fantastic piece of prose anyway (and it would be ace if anyone can shed light on who wrote it - I remember it vaguely from university days and deliberately kept a copy of it stored in a very safe place because it was so good. Problem is, I can't remember where that very safe place is 6 house moves later)
kurious oranj
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i got a lipogram for my 18th birthday ... unleash the feminists! oranj
anonymous grass
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I think good writing's something you can read over and over and it's still good. Bad writing's something you can enjoy a lot once but the next time you see it it's @!#$
Eric
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Some say that true art should not contain a message. I believe that, to be worthwhile, art MUST contain a message, but that it should be delivered subtly. Sometimes the message is merely 'Wake up, and look at the world through new eyes!' I think if one is relatively literate and educated it is one's duty to insert an element of morality into one's work. This should be done in a non-didactic manner. The best writing, IMHO, is driven by a sense of outrage, moral pain or injustice, but is shaped by the intellect. Writing can be technically brilliant, but without a heart to it, without an attempt to make sense of life, it cannot be great.
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