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How To Write Badly Well is a blog of writing snippets written by Joel Stickley. Each snippet is an attempt to exemplify some particular form of Bad Writing.

Tropes used or criticized include:

• Accidental Innuendo: "Blunder into double entendres." invoked
• Asspull: "Write yourself out of a corner."
• Author Avatar: "Write thinly-veiled, self-aggrandising autobiographical fiction."
• Author Tract: "Subtly weave your own opinions into the narrative."
• Author Vocabulary Calendar: "If you find a phrase you like, keep repeating it."
• Butt Monkey: Exaggerated in "Choose one character to bully"
• Beauty Equals Goodness: "Equate physical beauty with virtue"
• Because Destiny Says So: "Use 'fate' as a plot device."
• Beige Prose: "Narrate every scene in a matter-of-fact tone, no matter how exciting."
• Black Comedy: "Make light of tragedy."
• Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp": "Replace real-life items with fictional alternatives."
• Captain Obvious: "Make your similes very accurate."
• Character Derailment: "Suddenly change characters' motivations."invoked
• The Chris Carter Effect: "Refuse to resolve mysteries."invoked
• Cliché Storm: "Treat genre as a replacement for ideas."invoked
• Coitus Ensues: "If in doubt, initiate sex"
• Contemplate Our Navels: "Take yourself far too seriously."
• Creator Breakdown: "Write as therapy."
• Department of Redundancy Department: "Include unneccessary linguistic redundancies of language."
• Designated Hero: "Emphasise your hero's good qualities" invoked
• Designated Villain: "Emphasise your villian's bad qualities" invoked
• Deus ex Machina: "Write yourself out of a corner"
• Empathic Environment: "Begin the novel with your protagonist getting out of bed and seeing that it is raining outside, which perfectly mirrors his life."
• Featureless Plane of Disembodied Dialogue: "Do not contextualise dialogue"
• Filler Strip: "Rely on unsolicited submissions."
• First Person Peripheral Narrator: "Choose a narrator who is peripheral to the story."
• Follow the Leader: "Wear your influences on your sleeve."
• For the Evulz: "Make your villain genuinely evil."
• Foregone Conclusion: "Risk the narrator's life"
• Funetik Aksent: "Give your characters distinctive idioms."
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!: "Censor your characters."
• Info Dump: "Explain everything."
• Long Title: "Cram as much information and detail into the title as you can, even if this means sacrificing the readability of said title and somewhat stealing the thunder of the main body of the work itself, which is left only really being able to reiterate what has already been said in the title, which was itself clumsy and repetitious."
• Meaningful Name: "Give your characters evocative names."
• Meaningless Meaningful Words: "Select words for their impressiveness rather than their relevance."
• Mills and Boon Prose: "Replace concrete nouns with abstract ones."
• Mixed Metaphor: "Mix metaphors."
• Most Writers Are Writers: "Write to prove a point."
• Narm: "Fail to see the funny side." invoked
• Narrating The Obvious: "When writing radio drama, use dialogue to set the scene."
• Not Using the Z Word: "Beat around the bush"
• Only The Author Can Save Them Now: "Write yourself into a corner" invoked
• Parody: The Homage WeekNon-Contiguous Homage Fortnight, which includes stylistic parodies of:
  • The Bible: here.
  • Raymond Chandler: here.
  • Charles Dickens: here.
  • Ernest Hemingway: here.
  • James Joyce: here.
  • H. P. Lovecraft: here.
  • Vladimir Nabokov: here.
  • J. R. R. Tolkien: here.
  • P. G. Wodehouse: here.
• Painful Rhyme: "Change sentence structure for the benefit of your rhyme scheme." invoked
• Plot Detour: "Delay the ending."
• Plot-Induced Stupidity: "Sacrifice motivation for the sake of plotting."
• Politically Correct History: "Allow your characters to be centuries ahead of their time"
• Ripped from the Headlines: "Be topical"
• Rouge Angles of Satin / Malaproper: "Find the bone mote."
  • "Truss your spool-chucker."
• Said Bookism: "Use rich, evocative dialogue tags."
• Schedule Slip: "Miss deadlines."
• Shaped Like Itself: "Make your similes very accurate"
• Shown Their Work: "Include passing references to major historical events."
  • Expospeak: "Present your research in the form of dialogue."
• Sophisticated as Hell: "Don't be put off by wildly conflicting registers of language."
• Take That, Audience!: "Alienate your existing readership"
• That Makes Me Feel Angry:" Let your characters explain themselves."
• Trapped By Mountain Lions: "Create subplots which bear no relation to the main story." invoked
• Viewers Are Morons: "Underestimate your audience"
• Wanton Cruelty to the Common Comma: "Use semicolons because you think they look good, not because you know how they work" invoked
• Who Is This Guy Again?: "Refuse to give names to characters"
• Zeerust: "Write in a way which will not age well."

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