What Do You Think Makes A Bad Author?

[Deleted member 1244]

Raccoons.

 

[Deleted member 84247]

Raccoons.

Is that why you transitioned back into a shark? To be a better writer?

 

[NitroxDarks]

Taking rash decisions and overworking yourself, especially if you're not in a good situation. I wrote my first work for fun, while I did the second 'seriously', and my story is good, as some say, but my writing structure, sooooooo wordy.

 

[billydbd]

me

 

[Mandark]

i think everyone knows what you meant when you asked what a bad author is, clearly you’re not saying that they are bad people, only what makes someone suck at writing.

to answer that, for me there’s a couple of indicators.

a bad author is someone who doesn’t understand the tone of their own work. This usually means their characters are usually inconsistent and that typically makes the characters more and more 1 dimensional (constant anger, only writing about the harem, etc)

the next indication for a bad author for me is someone who writes a completely unoriginally. One example is fanfic that completely goes along with the main story. One Piece fanfics are the worst example of this, you’ll have complete self-inserts and the author doesn’t even try to alter the bad guys, the MC will literally just take another characters role whenever it suits them. Another example is someone using the same tropes over and over, for example, the underestimated MC getting provoked by XYZ character.

Finally, it’s obviously grammar. No, I’m not saying that every fiction should read like an actual published novel, but you should have at least checked the misspelled words. Scribblehub’s own text box will highlight misspelled words, not correcting them is just lazy.

 

[FleecedSheep]

Personally, I think a bad author writes with the expectation of praise. Not everybody will like your story, regardless of how good or bad it is. That's fine. But when an author thinks their entitled to praise, just because they put in the time to write some words down, well, you got a problem there. I can deal with bad writing, grammar, characters, as long as the overall story works. Sometimes, the overall story could be a flop, but the characters could be amazing. Or any other combination of things. To each their own honestly. Just, when it becomes a moral imperative to like an author's work because they wrote something, yeah, no, that's when you become a bad author, in my opinion.

 

[EliseValkyria]

Personally, I believe that a bad author is an author who does not want to improve.

A new author is bound to make mistakes, it is to be expected, what is not to be expected is to keep making the same mistakes over and over again..in spite of what his own readers tell him that ambits can have better things, the author refuses to recognize it and decides to ignore or say that they don't know what it is to be an author and therefore his argument is invalid.

I also put in the same category authors who only write the same thing over and over again are bad authors, as well as the low category one hit only artist.


You can be the best author ever to do romance stories, but if you just put out romance stories, and another romance story, and then another romance story, and then another romance story. That just tells me that as an author that person is incapable of doing anything else, and doesn't even have the little dignity to try to do something new with his or her work.

I also don't mean that after writing a romance you go and write a story of horror and tragedy, I mean people who only write one theme and that's all they ever spend their time on in their stories. You have to try to be a good author and try to know how to do a little bit of everything, so your stories will have variety within it. A romance series, but at one point it's a mystery trying to find a lost family member, then a comedy when they find him, maybe it has action when something unexpected happens, things like that.

A.K.A Rent a girlfriend autor

 

[MatchaChocolate69]

Honestly, there are all kinds of readers and authors out there. I often wonder if there's truly bad authors. When readers criticize a novel, they first talk about what they prefer or want a story to be. That a story doesn't go however they want is often thought to be "bad writing" even though maybe that's the vision of the author, and preferences are always subjective.
Often times we think that only by pleasing readers we are writing a good story, but is that really it? What if an author only writes for their own enjoyment? If you finish writing, and readers hate your story, but you feel fulfilled when you finish a chapter, are you really a bad writer?
I always wonder these things, does anybody has an idea or their own perspective about it?

As a Bad Author, I am an expert on the subject.
To be a good author, you just need to not be and not do like me.

In essence: egocentric, constantly seeking validation, lazy, unable to write anything meaningful, always seeking attention, inconsistent, procrastinating, overestimating oneself, believing to be better than one is, thinking oneself special, giving too much or too little importance to one's readers.

 

[Lysander_Works]

In short, poor writing performance, too much passive voice, bad grammar, the whole combo that makes a bad piece of work exist, is one element, especially when the author of which makes it clear they don't care to improve it. I don't count it as much if it was done for satire.

Worst of the worst is someone who thinks they are an author and generates all the writing for them using AI. Yes, there are people who do this.

 

[Corty]

Any author who is touting loudly that their story is special or the best, and they even say that in the story's title, synopsis, or whatever. Yet the chapters are short, the dialogue is nonsense, and everything is just a mishmash of current popular tropes. The insult to injury is that every chapter ends with a Patreon advertisement, even though they only have 3 chapters posted.

Tl;dr - the asset-flips of the writing communities. When someone takes the readers as stupid idiots who would pay for something that not even an AI can fix.

 

[Kureous]

Any author who is touting loudly that their story is special or the best, and they even say that in the story's title, synopsis, or whatever. Yet the chapters are short, the dialogue is nonsense, and everything is just a mishmash of current popular tropes. The insult to injury is that every chapter ends with a Patreon advertisement, even though they only have 3 chapters posted.

Tl;dr - the asset-flips of the writing communities. When someone takes the readers as stupid idiots who would pay for something that not even an AI can fix.

This seems personal...

 

[Comiak]

The only bad author is the one that doesn't improve over time. It's perfectly fine to start badly and make mistakes as long as you are learning and improving your writing. A master isn't made by succeeding they are made by failing and learning what the difference is between good and bad and why it is.

 

[PancakesWitch]

Any author who is touting loudly that their story is special or the best, and they even say that in the story's title, synopsis, or whatever. Yet the chapters are short, the dialogue is nonsense, and everything is just a mishmash of current popular tropes. The insult to injury is that every chapter ends with a Patreon advertisement, even though they only have 3 chapters posted.

Tl;dr - the asset-flips of the writing communities. When someone takes the readers as stupid idiots who would pay for something that not even an AI can fix.

damn that reminded me of a certain Webnovel Author that's always being really hypocrite to the point it feels ironic, but they're actually serious... i am not going to throw names but their protagonist is always the same template, hell, they are even the same looking half-elves

 

[nemonusquam_]

Other than the actual technical aspect of writing, a bad author is someone who is always on the defensive about their work; they're thus unwilling to see their creations objectively and cannot differentiate between constructive and shallow critiques.
You can't improve if you don't see room for improvement.

 

[HungrySheep]

Any author who is touting loudly that their story is special or the best, and they even say that in the story's title, synopsis, or whatever. Yet the chapters are short, the dialogue is nonsense, and everything is just a mishmash of current popular tropes. The insult to injury is that every chapter ends with a Patreon advertisement, even though they only have 3 chapters posted.

Tl;dr - the asset-flips of the writing communities. When someone takes the readers as stupid idiots who would pay for something that not even an AI can fix.

pls suscrie 2 my patron

 

[TsumiHokiro]

Bad authors make bad authors.

 

[Deleted member 68927]

I don't like calling anyone a bad author because we are all writing to tell a story which is dear to us, but someone who will leave a story after a story on hiatus comes pretty close.

 

[J_Chemist]

I'd say there isn't a bad author, per say, but then I think of the nefarious reasons I could write for.

A bad author would be someone who utilizes writing for a poor purpose different than the typical "reasons", such as strictly attempting to squeeze readers of their money or ruining the experience for other authors. A bad author is a person who posts a story/stories not for the fun and joy of writing, but to use it even though they think it to be nothing more then a cash grab on readers who don't know any better.

That's a bad author. Everyone else is mostly trying to have fun, write something they enjoy, write for their readers, or write to live. To note, writing to live is not synonymous with writing to drain your readers. Most individuals who write to live enjoy their craft and do it because they love it.

Someone who writes to drain their readers will follow the flow of the masses and write books specifically to cater to their taste, slap it all behind a paywall and/or encourage the donation of money, and write to that fanbase to milk the cow.

 

[Garon]

This is all subjective. But the author can objectively write poorly. His story has no soul of its own, or it's just dirty porn. I myself do not consider myself a good example author. I don't know english, I'm new to this writing thing. But I have fun, that's the main thing for me.

 

[prognastat]

Any author with a capital Z in their username.