Top 100 Quotes About Bad Writing
#1. My characters were ... rebelling against something ... My own bad writing. I wouldn't do for my characters what they needed for me to do - be courageous enough in my writing to make them interesting.
John Scalzi
#2. A great deal of the bad writing in the world comes simply from writing too quickly. Of course you reply, "I do it to save time". A very good object, no doubt: but what right have you to do it at your friend's expense? Isn't his time as valuable as yours?
Lewis Carroll
#3. I think finally good writing gets out there, and people like it, and bad writing doesn't. Well, no. Bad writing does get out there 'cause some people like it.
Robert B. Parker
#4. You do an awful lot of bad writing in order to do any good writing. Incredibly bad. I think it would be very interesting to make a collection of some of the worst writing by good writers.
William S. Burroughs
#5. Think 'Game of Thrones.' In the old days, this sort of show might be considered bad writing. It doesn't really seem to be moving toward a crisis or climax, it has no true protagonist, and it's structured less like a TV show or a movie than a soap opera.
Douglas Rushkoff
#6. There is no left and right in writing. There is only good and bad writing.
Ernest Hemingway,
#7. Writing to corroborate what you already think is the essence of bad writing.
Victor LaValle
#8. A day of bad writing is always better than a day of no writing.
Don Roff
#9. When reading a book, one hopes it doesn't turn into a painful process. Predictable is bad enough. Laborious is acceptable if the labor produces fruit. But with painfully bad writing, all one can do is grab a hatchet, slice off its head, and bury it.
Chila Woychik
#10. There's no bad writing; you did something. I was operating inside language, and I did something. I'm not ashamed of it.
Aleksandar Hemon
#11. You can only write regularly if you're willing to write badly. You can't write regularly and well. One should accept bad writing as a way of priming the pump, a warm-up exercise that allows you to write well.
Jennifer Egan
#12. Bad writing, it is easily verified, has never kept scholarship from being published.
Jacques Barzun
#13. The story of Jesus makes no sense to me. God sent his only son. Why could God only have one son and why would he have to die? It's just bad writing, really. And it's really terrible in about the second act.
Trey Parker
#15. Every reader of the Dreiser novels must cherish astounding specimens
of awkward, platitudinous marginalia, of whole scenes spoiled by bad writing, of phrases as brackish as so many lumps of sodium hyposulphite.
H.L. Mencken
#16. Write at a pace that doesn't surpass your creative flow. Don't be hasty; don't be sloppy. Don't forfeit impressive writing for an impressive word count. Because eventually it will all have to be edited, and you'll find that it is harder to make bad writing good than to make good writing better.
Richelle E. Goodrich
#17. You start realizing that good prose is crunchy. There's texture in your mouth as you say it. You realize bad writing, bland writing, has no texture, no taste, no corners in your mouth. I'm a great believer in reading aloud.
Janet Fitch
#18. Don't apologize, justify or rationalize bad art or bad writing. If you do, you are part of it.
Walter Darby Bannard
#19. Finished crap can be edited. Unfinished greatness languishes forever. The only bad writing is the thing you didn't write!
Margarita Gakis
#20. Bad movies and bad writing and easy cliches still manage to make us feel things toward each other. Part of me is disgusted by this. Part of me celebrates it.
Leslie Jamison
#21. Bad writing is not easier than good writing. It's just as hard to make a toilet seat as it is a castle window. Only the view is different.
Ben Hecht
#22. The dirty secret of art is you don't have to show people your bad writing. That's what we have the delete key for.
Robert McKee
#24. Good writers hate bad writing but hating bad writing doesn't make you good. Writing badly does.
Dan Harmon
#25. Classic writing, with its assumption of equality between writer and reader, makes the reader feel like a genius. Bad writing makes the reader feel like a dunce.
Steven Pinker
#26. It's difficult to write a really good short story because it must be a complete and finished reflection of life with only a few words to use as tools. There isn't time for bad writing in a short story.
Edna Ferber
#27. You can't improv off of bad writing. Then you have to actually create your objective, which is really hard to do in an element without the skeleton to go off of.
Eliza Coupe
#28. Bad writing is better than never writing. Bad writing can be improved, but if you never write, you'll never improve.
Caroline Hemingway
#29. Read. Read. Read. Read many genres. Read good writing. Read bad writing and figure out the difference. Learn the craft of writing.
Carol Berg
#30. If we don't understand bad writing, we can't understand good writing. Bad writing is characterized by obfuscation, showboating, narcissism, lack of a moral core, and style over substance. Good writing is exactly the opposite. Bad writing draws attention to the writer himself.
Anis Shivani
#31. It's bad writing, however naturalistic it's written, that's where you have to do your best acting.
Adam Brody
#32. Bad writing's like bad women: there's just not much you can do about it
Charles Bukowski
#33. Bad writing is bad not just because the language is humdrum, but the quality of the observation is so poor.
Christopher Isherwood
#34. The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering.
Tom Waits
#35. It takes a lot of bad writing to get to a little good writing.
Truman Capote
#36. If a man means his writing seriously, he must mean to write well. But how can he write well until he learns to see what he has written badly. His progress toward good writing and his recognition of bad writing are bound to unfold at something like the same rate.
John Ciardi
#37. Now, instead of treating bad writing days as random, unavoidable disasters to be weathered, like thunderstorms, I started treating them as red flags.
Rachel Aaron
#38. Jokes that are gratuitously offensive are synonymous with bad writing to me. I'm offended as a writer first and as a person second.
Rachel Bloom
#39. I'm struggling at the end to get out of the valley of hectoring youth, journalistic middle age, imposture, moneymaking, public relations, bad writing, mental confusion.
Stephen Spender
#40. I will not suffer bad writing.
Me
#42. I have come to the belief that there is not merely an accidental relationship between bad writing and routine sociological research, but a wonderfully pure, integral relationship; the awkwardness is necessary and inevitable.
Elizabeth Hardwick
#43. Some truly bad writing, but brilliantly funny at the same time.
"When he was yet a million miles away the bright ring of fire that marked its portal filled the sky in front of him, flexing and twisting like the devil's anus in spasms of immortal agony.
Alan Glasser
#44. TV's not the problem, and I'm tired of it being posed as this antithesis to creativity and productivity. If TV's getting in your way of writing a book, then you don't want to write a book bad enough.
Andrea Seigel
#45. There is a heavy price to pay for writing a bad book.
Tony Burgess
#46. Around age 18, I decided to start writing my own stuff. I wrote some bad short films and shot them. I tried to make them better and better. I slowly learned how to make movies, and I think I'm still learning.
Quentin Dupieux
#47. Many writers are afraid of writing something bad, so they don't try or give up when their efforts don't lead to a masterpiece right away. If you work at it, you will improve.
Lauren Tarshis
#48. When the writing fit came on, she gave herself up to it with entire abandon, and led a blissful life, unconscious of want, care, or bad weather, while she sat safe and happy in an imaginary world, full of friends almost as real and dear to her as any in the flesh.
Louisa May Alcott
#49. Good critical writing is measured by the perception and evaluation of the subject; bad critical writing by the necessity of maintaining the professional standing of the critic.
Raymond Chandler
#50. I've always thought flight was fun and wanted to write about flight, and I knew a lot of househusbands who were having a really bad time with it. I thought flight might perk up a marriage here or there.
Steven Amsterdam
#51. If you write one story, it may be bad; if you write a hundred, you have the odds in your favor.
Edgar Rice Burroughs
#52. I'm really bad at describing my books. Journalists like to have things like "It's The Terminator Meets the Seven Dwarfs." And I can't do that with my books. If I could, I probably wouldn't write them.
Charles De Lint
#53. If you go to a big city anywhere in the world and you need a doctor, just ask me. I can tell you who's good and who's bad. I've even considered writing a guidebook.
Steffi Graf
#54. If you don't allow yourself the possibility of writing something very, very bad, it would be hard to write something very good.
Steven Galloway
#55. Slaying dragons, melting witches, and banishing demons is all fun and games until someone loses a sidekick - then it's personal. The bad guy isn't just the "bad guy" anymore, he's the BAD GUY!
Michael J. Sullivan
#56. (Slap) "Owhhh ... " Raymond yelled as the Old Man's cane hit his face.
Judy Byington
#57. I like writing books. I'd rather be at home with my wife. I can write, take a break, come out, have a glass of tea, give my wife a kiss, and go back in and write some more. It's not so bad. I am really lucky.
Gene Wilder
#58. The biggest misconception is that I only write about shitty people. Or that I'm trying to be shocking. I just think people are super weird, so I like to write characters that get addicted to things, lose their minds, hurt others, put themselves in bad situations. I'm just more interested in that.
Leslye Headland
#59. Good or bad, words have an impact on each of us. As a writer, I can only hope that the effects my words have on others are more often good than bad.
Jessica Lave
#60. What if this young woman, who writes such bad poems, in competition with her husband, whose poems are equally bad, should stretch her remarkably long and well-made legs out before you, so that her skirt slips up to the tops of her stockings?
Gilbert Sorrentino
#61. Only bad actors memorize lines. Good actors are perpetually writing them as they act.
Mark Helprin
#62. Dr. S. talked to me about magical thinking. She was right. Much depends on chance, on what we can't control, on others. She did not say that writing to Boris was a bad idea, but then she never judged anything. That was her magic. [p. 85]
Siri Hustvedt
#63. If you find yourself imitating another writer, that doesn't have to be a bad thing, especially if you are a young or a new writer. However, you should be conscious of exactly how you are imitating him - word choice, sentence structure, motifs? - and think about why you're doing it.
Poppy Z. Brite
#64. I couldn't hack it in Hollywood, my writing's wasn't bad enough.
Russ Lippitt
#65. Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn't matter. I'm not sure a bad person can write a good book. If art doesn't make us better, then what on earth is it for.
Alice Walker
#66. Heresy is usually quite sophisticated, actually has a meaning, and is to be taken very seriously. It is therefore to be carefully distinguished from turgid, pretentious, badly-written Bullsgeshichte, to use the technical German theological term.
Carl R. Trueman
#67. I often tell people to stop being afraid of writing bad poetry, or bad anything. I think that a lot of times, when people claim that they have writer's block, or that they get stuck, it's just because they're scared of writing bad things.
Sarah Kay
#68. No.'
It's not a bad word.
And it is very important to use at times.
Practice saying it in the mirror.
It's empowering.
Christy Hall
#69. A writer's life is so hazardous that anything he does is bad for him. Anything that happens to him is bad: failure's bad, success is bad; impoverishment is bad, money is very, very bad. Nothing good can happen ... Except the act of writing.
E.L. Doctorow
#70. Well, yes, as I was a rather bad actor then and I wasn't making enough money, I thought, to make enough money to not make money as an actor, I'd better do some writing.
Val Guest
#71. I never think about a movie when I'm writing a book, because I think only two things could happen and both of them are bad. You write a lousy novel and a lousy film.
Don Winslow
#72. I began writing poetry when I was about 10. Bad poetry, but you start with bad poetry.
Jonas Mekas
#73. There are plenty of bad editors who try to impose their own vision on a book. ( ... )
A good novel editor is invisible.
Terri Windling
#74. If I teach you reading and writing, I'm warning you I've got to hit you on the head and call you bad names when you're stupid, because that's how you do teaching.
Louis De Bernieres
#75. [Lord Brougham's writings on the bee's cell contain] as striking examples of bad reasoning as are often to be met with in writings related to mathematical subjects.
James Whitbread Lee Glaisher
#76. If you are a real writer, then just surrender to the writer's life, all of it, even the bad stuff. When you do that, the beauty appears: the peace, the meaning, the joy, the fulfillment, the sense that you are doing what you were born to do and what could be better, in the end, than that?
Lauren B. Davis
#77. I'm not patient at all. I avoid writer's block by writing. I power through with a bad version, so I can move on, and usually once I've gotten to the next scene, I'll discover what was missing from the bad version scene. Then I can easily rewrite it to get back on the right path.
Anders Holm
#78. Don't be afraid to write bad songs and then start over and re-evaluate. Songs are like plants, in that you grow them. Some grow really fast, and others need pruning and care ... And, finally, a song needs to move you. If it doesn't move you, it will never move anybody else.
Corey Harris
#79. He traced the shape of the bird, wondering what she could have done to merit writing herself a memo on her body.
"It's a very permanent sort of reminder."
She raised herself up slightly, catching his gaze and holding it. "They were really bad mistakes.
Ruthie Knox
#80. How many words a day do I write? Between six and seven thousand. And how many hours does that take? Three on a good day, as high as thirteen on a bad one
John Creasey
#81. Well, Bud," he said, looking at me, "I'll be damned if you don't go to a lot of trouble to have your fun. Kidnapping, then fighting. What do you do on your holidays? Burn houses?
William Faulkner
#82. What is good for you creatively is usually bad commercially. You thrive financially by sticking to a series and not fiddling about too much. You do yourself harm by moving away from the series and the genre. By trying things not based in that particular mode of writing, you will just lose readers.
John Connolly
#83. Every good story needs a good, bad and lost soul. A people to fight for, an item to turn the tide of battle, an enigmatic character, a motivator/mentor, and an unlikely reluctant hero.
Josh Rose
#84. You can't be a good writer in the States anymore because to be a good one you have to have a country where you can be poor and still eat, and still make your living standard secondary to your writing. Thoreau himself couldn't do that in the States today.
Nelson Algren
#85. I wasn't really a dark kid, but I was in my head a lot. I got good grades all through my 16 years of Catholic school, but I was always writing these weird - and, I have to say, really bad - stories, filled with murder.
Karen Abbott
#86. Is a twist less satisfying if you know it's coming? Is a twist that you can't predict symptomatic of bad construction? These are things to consider when writing.
Gabrielle Zevin
#87. I should have been deliriously happy. I had my dream come true. I'm a best-selling author. So why is everything in my life, including my writing, going bad?
Tawni O'Dell
#88. You don't need help to write a song. You just need to get over this experience that bummed you out so bad. The relationship you were in is over, it was over a long time ago, and you need to move on.
Stevie Nicks
#89. There's this whole idea that you've got the blues and you're going to write. Bullshit. When I feel really bad, all I want to do is sit in front of the TV with the remote control and check out.
Lucinda Williams
#90. I've worked with genius performers. Sometimes they created great work with a bad script ... but not often. Play it safe: write well.
Jerry Juhl
#91. The newspaper is, in fact, very bad for one's prose style. That's why I gravitated towards feature stories where you get a little more leeway in the writing style.
Tom Wolfe
#92. My writing legacy would be my true depiction of life; exploring the entire colorful spectrum of people, both good and bad, capturing it in words and exposing it to all cultures in a respectful manner - In a way that would stand the test of time.
Diane Martin
#93. Thomas Mann used to write education novels and now you can write an education memoir, and there are all these memoirs coming out now about people's relationships with books. Like anything else, these can be good or bad. The genre doesn't make it good or bad, it's the execution.
Marco Roth
#94. My guiltiest pleasure in life is 'America's Funniest Home Videos.' I watch them all - old, new - I don't care. Despite how bad the writing is on the show. The people getting hit and hurt, that's hilarious.
Russell Peters
#95. I honestly feel like we never had a bad episode by TV standards. Every week I felt there were so many strong components of the show, especially the writing.
Donal Logue
#96. When the loo paper gets thicker and the writing paper thinner, it's always a bad sign, at home.
Nancy Mitford
#97. I know the Chicago media will write a lot of bad things, but they'll write a lot of good things too. I can live with that. In Cleveland, all I got was negative press.
Albert Belle
#98. Some say writing is its own reward. I write for money, but writing for money is not so bad, especially when that writing brings you joy.
Eloisa James
#99. When you are writing a song for something else, if you are doing something for money, I always think that's bad luck.
Chad Kroeger
#100. I kept writing not because I felt I was so good, but because I felt they were so bad, including Shakespeare, all those. The stilted formalism, like chewing cardboard.
Charles Bukowski
