What exactly makes bad writing? (Possible spoilers)

[bartholen_v1legacy]

[THIS THREAD MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS]

This popped up on my mind recently. So many things (and many of them games, lo and behold) get accused of being badly written these days that I think it's time we got down to writing some criteria for it. I'm not a literary professor or even a student, so people who know more about this stuff, feel free to contribute and correct.

I'm going to use two different examples of this to bring my points across: Gantz (the manga) and Evangelion 3.0: You can (not) Redo. These criteria are not numbered in any particular order, just in the order they popped up on my mind (Oh boy, I'm expecting a long post)

#1: Having stuff happen just for its own sake

The following image is from Gantz, from towards the end of the manga during an attack on Earth.

Spoiler: May be NSFW, so supplied as a link

http://www.mangareader.net/97-53141-17/gantz/chapter-320.html

In short, the humans in the picture are trapped in some weird liquid flow that apparently leads to something that slices them open and bleeds them dry. I could be very unsettling (and it is) and interesting, but I don't remember the manga ever giving this device any purpose. It's there just to provide lots of naked people panicking and some quite disturbing imagery. What point does it serve? How does it move the plot? Does it tell us anything about the characters? The answers are nothing, no and no. It's just sorta... there.

#2 Expecting the audience to just go along with stuff

In one of the more refreshing twists of Gantz, the main character (who is a massively unlikable **** in the beginning) saves a timid and homely girl who couldn't be further away from the kind of women that usually serve as love interests, and develops quite a sweet relationship with her. I didn't mind it too much, but when I started thinking about it, it really makes quite little sense. We never see how their bond develops, aside from the fact that he saves her from certain death. After that we just get told they started going to school together and bam, they're banging like rabbits.

How exactly did they form this unbreakable bond? What was it that made them like each other so much? Did they have similar life stories? Shared common interests? Were both outcasts? I can't remember it ever being quite elaborated on in the manga (please correct me if I'm wrong). This kind of "We couldn't think up believable development into a relationship so just trust us, they really are in love, okay" attitude seems kind of cheap and lazy to me.

#3 Unnatural dialogue

I'm trusting most of you can figure this one out on your own. It's very easy to notice when people don't talk the way they're supposed to. I phrase it like that because saying "talk like real people" is a little narrow. I can't think of a very clear example, but the Matrix sequels were IMO clear offenders on this, turning Morpheus, for example, from a mysterious guy who talked a little oddly into a whacked-out pretentious weirdo with horrible teeth.

#4 Pointless characters

This one goes to Evangelion 3.0, and specifically Mari. Her part in 2.0 was already very small, but she contributed at least a wee tiny bit to the plot. In 3.0, she had no purpose, no part to play, nothing to add to bloody anything. She could have been taken entirely out of the movie and it wouldn't have mattered.

I could think up a lot more examples, but I just want to start this thread. Add more criteria and provide examples, if ye please.

 

[ItouKaiji]

#5

Hi, we're main characters that just met, we should be love interests. Like they can smell the main characterness on each other and it really makes them want to rub genitals. An example of it done right is Blue Gender the series, the relationship grows naturally through their shared experience. An example of it done wrong. Pick any generic action movie with love interest and you'll see this.

#6

Overly precocious little children. This one is really specific but I see it a lot. Like the writer has no idea how to write for a child so they just write a miniature adult instead. It always feels wrong. Especially because kids especially smaller kids have a different way of thinking and can actually provide a different perspective on situations because of that child like nature.

#7

If your character is supposed to be smart don't make them do retarded things and then try to make it look rational. A smart person or a genius is that. They're not psychic, the rules of the world apply to them. So don't make them execute plans that make them look psychic. I'm looking at both Death Note and Code Geass here. So many time Lelouch and Light would have looked retarded if even one little random thing with their plans went wrong. Smart people also plan for things to go wrong and wouldn't be nearly that reckless.

 

[Daystar Clarion]

Boring dialogue


Now, I don't mean this in the sense that the subject of the dialogue is uninteresting, but the way the characters are talking about it. It makes your characters boring, lack personality, and overall, just makes the reader want to skip over it because of how bloody lifeless and boring it is.

 

[BitterLemon]

I guess there's a lot of games that use melodramatic structure and this is generally perceived as bad or lazy writing. A melodrama is a kind of story that only wants to cause lots of emotions in the espectator, no matter if it doesn't make sense. It's a genre that rely a lot on sterotypes and characters are mostly motivated by external events to evolve through the narrative. Taking a classic soap opera example, the perfect boy and the perfect girl who loves each other just because they are perfect... they will never disappoint each other, unless a external event affects them: the evil jealous girl. The evil girl makes the perfect girl think that the boy cheated on her, so they break up. What will make them come together again? Another external event: the secret videotape that proves that's a scheme created by the evil girl, so the perfect boy and girl can go back to their perfect state.

Melodrama is like a magician pulling rabbit after rabbit from his hat and it's kind of poor because the character have very little emotional development this way, they are just reacting to disgrace afer disgrace. Meaningful stories generally cause tension less by external events and more from interaction between characters and how they develop. That's not to say that good stories can't have external events affecting characters, but it's more valuable when this event cause a internal transformation in the character that is interesting to see unfolding and how this affects the story world.

It's okay to like melodramas, it's not forbidden, and a hell lot of movies use it either, but it's something meant to gratuitous cause emotions, and not to make you think about emotions, or life, or whatever. When well made, they make good entertainment... and very poor art. That's why critics loathe it.

 

[[Kira Must Die]]

All of the points you've just listed reasons why I hate Mawaru Penguindrum.

Spoiler: Sorry, about to go on a mini tangent here.

#1 and #2: The child broiler in episode 20 applies to this. There's really no logical reasoning behind it. Yeah, they mention a corrupt government and a rebellion, but we never see anything of them. They're just mentioned and we don't see any proof of them. Yeah, there's the child broiler, but again, it makes no fucking sense. Even if there was a corrupt government, why would they have that. What benefit is there for a factory that kills children having insecurity issues? (and are willingly letting themselves be killed, mind you. You'd think that if they wanted to kill themselves they'd find much more practical ways to do it, rather than go all the way to a factory in the middle of the city and sit on a long conveyor belt leading to a grinder.) How much money was put into making this stupid contraption? Who thought it was a good idea? And who the hell agreed with it? And again, we don't know the logic behind it because we don't know a GODDAMN THING ABOUT THIS BIG EVIL GOVERNMENT THEY KEEP IMPLYING! In Battle Royal, you get why they'd have such a program, because the government has become increasingly afraid of the youth and wants to induce fear in the populace to prevent an uprising. Here, there's nothing. Just "Government bad. They made child killing factory. It sucks." and it never goes into any greater detail. This leads to my biggest problem with the anime; It's all style, all substance, no story. It's biggest concern is not to tell a sensible story or write believable character, but to throw in as much weirdness and intellectual bullshit in your face as possible in hopes that you eat it up and believe that it's telling a deep story. None of its symbolism or themes are to the benefit of the plot, but to the benefit of itself, and the saddest thing is that I think it's actually trying to tell a good story, but it's falling for its own tricks, if that makes any sense

And also, why do you even need a rebellion or a evil government in this? That's another problem with Penguindrum, It makes itself way too overly complicated for its own good, where I don't even think it can even keep up with itself.

Yeah, as you can tell, this part really, really got to me.

#3:Every. Line. Of dialogue. In that show is nothing but the most trite, philosophical, pseudo-intellectual dialogue that you hear in nearly every anime dumped into one. Every character talks like this. Even the children. Nobody talks like a normal human being in this show.

#4: The penguins. They do nothing but goof around in the background while a serious moment is happening. Nobody ever even acknowledges their presence, not even the main characters, who are the only ones who can see them. Sure, they helped spy on Ringo in the first two episodes, but after that they don't do anything, and even with that you didn't really need them. It would be one thing if they were funny, but I never found them funny, because apart from sucking out any dramatic tension from scenes, they have no personality nor even facial expression. There's no reason for their goofy shenanigans.

Other than Penguindrum, though, Elfen Lied had a lot of pointless characters. In fact, Elfen Lied fits all of these as well.

OT: I think you put out some valid points, but I think that even if a movie/show/game has all this, if it's still not entertaining enough to make you look past a lot of those points, then they've truly failed.

 

[senordesol]

UNGROUNDED CHARACTERS There's tendency when attempting to create characters that we are to accept as 'bad asses' or hyper-competent, to make them into super human beings with no connection to reality. These characters might walking into a room where a bunch of bad guys are armed with assault rifles and the protag only has a sword yet -lo and behold- our hero is never even grazed.

I can't count the times I've seen this happen in movies and shows, and it really frustrates me because it removes all tension. I actually start to root for the bad guys in these cases because they face a far more difficult task than the protagonist.

However this does not extend only to fighting skills, but technical skills as well like 'hackers' who can break into a system or write a program in seconds.

CHARACTERS WHO DO THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT WILL HELP THEM Now this is not in reference to ironic circumstances (i.e. they don't know that what they're doing is counter to their interests), but actual decisions to continue to do something when basic logic dictates that there's no way they can profit from it.

Take, for example, when a bad guy kills a henchman for some minor slight; yes, it establishes the badguy as a douche with no regard for human life but it also makes the remaining henchmen into idiots. If the price for screwing up once means your life; then you seriously need to reevaluate why you're sticking around.

CHARACTERS WHO DON'T NEED NOTHING FROM NOBODY Perhaps this is a personal peeve, but I don't have much patience for characters who...well...don't have much patience. Whether overly embittered, overly masculine, or just overly independent; when characters refuse to carry on conversations, or accept help, or offer help, or...do anything that is specifically meant to draw out the plot...it's just annoying, not admirable.

 

[Murderiser]

Personally, using a character behaving idiotically to advance the plot- even more so if there is an 'Idiot Ball' being passed around. A severe offender is Tomb Raider (WARNING: SPOILERS)

e.g.: narcissistic douche bag anthropologist dude comes running back to camp firing a gun wildly at assailants who aren't there and spins a very unrealistic story about escaping his captors (whom he has been very chummy with up till now). Lara says that he will betray them because she saw him helping the villains earlier, but the acting captain overrides her for...reasons? Despite the fact that it is blindingly obvious that he will betray them (he does) she tells Lara to shut the hell up and welcomes him back into the group, even though EVERYONE objects to this. Up until that point, acting-captain-woman (can't remember her name) had been fairly rational, albeit slightly hostile toward Lara, and then she suddenly seems to have bashed her head against a rock one too many times and become moronic. Even Lara suffers from this, as she is somehow unable to put together the villain's plan until 30 minutes from the end, even though the ruins she has been exploring for the past 48 hours have been outright telling her what the crazies plan to do with Sam. I came to that game expecting a decent narrative and instead found a bunch of poorly characterized cardboard cutouts that contract idiotitis whenever the writer needs to shove the plot along.

I don't mind characters behaving stupid which causes the plot to move on, it just can't be used as a crutch or make it happen completely out of character. An example of how to do it right is Game of Thrones (SPOILERS for the TV series, haven't read the books). While a lot of characters make dunder-headed decisions, it does make sense as they are either a) not that smart/not as smart as they think they are to begin with (Cersei, Joffrey) or b) behaving according to their character, such as when Robb executes Rickard Karstark. Everyone tells him it's stupid and that it will cost him the war, but he does it anyway because he is constantly thinking 'What would Daddy do?'.

Rant over and again, SPOILERS.

 

[Murderiser]

UNGROUNDED CHARACTERS There's tendency when attempting to create characters that we are to accept as 'bad asses' or hyper-competent, to make them into super human beings with no connection to reality. These characters might walking into a room where a bunch of bad guys are armed with assault rifles and the protag only has a sword yet -lo and behold- our hero is never even grazed.

Also, this, a million times. The 'unstoppable hero' archetype is by far the most irritating for me. Doubly so if it's either a blatant author self-insertion or is of a character that is the author's pet (looking at you River Song).

 

[HoneyVision]

I'm seeing a lot of talk about characters, but I'm seeing very little about the actual writing.

Here is my FOUNDATIONAL list for bad writing. Once you get rid of these faults you're on your way to being a good writer.

1) Lack of wholeness.
The absolute worst thing a writer can do is to create a writing piece that feels unfinished or incomplete. It feels like an experiment and you constantly wonder if more should have been invested into the thought process behind the writing. Things like forgetting to address loose ends at the end of the book and artificially solving characters' problems are both BIG instances where you feel the writer has not taken the effort to form a proper coherent piece of writing.

2) Lack of purpose.
There's no such thing as 'writing solely to entertain'. People WANT to be mentally engaged. NO ONE wants to read about bunch of events stringed together without any real message or meaning. It's why literature has had so much power and influence throughout history. Your writing should ALWAYS start with a purpose, never the plot. The plot exists solely to express your purpose. A collection of 'exciting' events means nothing if they're not doing some kind of idea expression. This is a big issue for new writers, which brings me to...

3) Unsupported ideas.
It's great to see writers who are passionate about expressing a particular idea or issue. But that's only the beginning. I truly feel for those beginning writers who have so much passion about an issue but don't particularly have the right technical expertise to CONVINCINGLY and EFFECTIVELY express that issue. You've got to know your literary tools and you've got to use them as creatively and artistically as possible. Language features are your BEST friend (similes, metaphors, personifications, hyperboles, emotive language, alliteration, assonance, rhyme, meter, metanoia, personal pronouns). I could go on forever. But when used in control those features will make your ideas jump at the reader and command their attention.

The rest will follow. Things like characters will fall into place once your learn what your purpose is. If you know WHY you're writing your piece you will just naturally avoid undeveloped characters, unneeded dialogue and pointless events.