History StylisticSuck / Literature

* Creator/IsaacAsimov's story ''Cal'' features the eponymous robot's quest to become a writer, aided by having various modules installed. At first his stories are textbook examples of this trope, but the last story he writes avoids this (and pisses off his master enough that his master tries to have all the upgrades removed).
** As a bonus, the story is about a demon called Azazel... That's right: Cal finally became a good enough writer to ''copy Asimov.''

* Both ''Literature/AtlantaNights'' and ''Crack of Death'' were written for submission to [=PublishAmerica=], to test their claim that they were a traditional publisher instead of VanityPublishing. They were both written by a group of authors writing as badly as they could from a minimal outline. Both were accepted, but after the hoax was revealed, [=PublishAmerica=] suddenly backed out.
** ''Naked Came the Stranger'' was written for a similar, but more ambitious purpose--to see how well a "bad" book would sell if it had a lot of gratuitous sex. Pretty well, as it turns out.

* Both ''AtlantaNights'' and ''Crack of Death'' were written for submission to [=PublishAmerica=], to test their claim that they were a traditional publisher instead of VanityPublishing. They were both written by a group of authors writing as badly as they could from a minimal outline. Both were accepted, but after the hoax was revealed, [=PublishAmerica=] suddenly backed out.

* ''TheSoundAndTheFury''. The first section is written from the perspective of a retarded man, and moves in and out of flashbacks with no warning. It also gives no {{expospeak}} of any kind, making it ridiculously difficult to figure out the setting or the character relationships. The second section of the book is written by a lunatic who [[TrueArtIsIncomprehensible is apparently opposed to the sentence]]. Then it gets comprehensible.

** The short story "Voice from the Vortex" by Gareth Roberts in ''Magazine/DoctorWhoMagazine'' is a parody of the TheyJustDidntCare stories in the sixties and seventies World Distributors ''Doctor Who'' [[TheChristmasAnnual annuals]], with appalling artwork, a nonsensical plot, and characters called "[[IAmNotShazam Dr. Who]]" and "Rosie Taylor" ([[FashionDissonance who wears a mod dress and beehive]]). It also features constant [[CriticalResearchFailure glaring inaccuracies]], like the time machine being called ''Tardis'' and having a rectangular console and making a beeping noise when it takes off; and writing the Ninth Doctor (a terse, witty Mancunian) with the same speech patterns as the First Doctor (a fearsome and formal old man), describing him as wearing a cloak and handbag and being chubby, and having him [[TechnicalPacifist carry a gun]] and cry for no reason. On top of that the prose is riddled with malapropisms and basically ugly verbal constructions and ends with AnAesop that has nothing to do with anything that happened.

* The ''BlackCompany'' novels are supposedly the annals of the eponymous mercenary company, and each Annalist puts his own spin on recording events. When one Annalist was sick, the Company's wizard had to fill in for a few chapters, and his writing was ''terrible''.

* An InUniverse example from the Literature/VorkosiganSaga is the [[GovernmentAgencyOfFiction ImpSec]] building on Barrayar whose ugliness is such a RunningGag that children's cartoon characters are made out of its gargoyles.

* In the ''CaptainUnderpants'' series, George and Harold write and draw (well, George writes and Harold draws) their own comics, with each book having at least one comic for a chapter. The art and spelling is, to put it simply, sub-par. Their MirrorUniverse counterparts, however, draw comics which have superior art and spelling. The normal-universe George and Harold, however, think it's ''awful''.

* ''Literature/TheHungerGames'': Whether or not the books' prose style actually sucks is up for debate, but either way, it was purposeful; the excessive usage of fragments and the occasional lack of description is supposed to emulate the narrating voice of a barely educated teenage girl in a prnightlockesent-tense StreamOfConsciousness fashion.

* ''Literature/IPartridgeWeNeedToTalkAboutAlan'' is made of this trope. It's the "autobiography" of the character, and his writing style is sheer torture. He particularly abuses ThatMakesMeFeelAngry and ClicheStorm, changes tenses semi-randomly, misuses words, [[UnreliableNarrator lies all the time]] and invents unbelievable embellishments, informs the readers whenever he does anything he considers clever with his writing, at one point plagiarises Wikipedia, and gives long and painfully elaborate descriptions of irrelevant details such as the exact physical way that he opened an envelope containing his A-level results. There is nothing good about his writing whatsoever.

* In ''TreasureIsland'', the character Dr. Livesey takes over narration of the events on ship while Jim off on the island, doing so in a very tedious style.

* ''Literature/IPartridgeWeNeedToTalkAboutAlan'' is made of this trope. It's the "autobiography" of the character, and his writing style is sheer torture. He particularly abuses ThatMakesMeFeelAngry and ClicheStorm, changes tenses semi-randomly, misuses words, [[UnreliableNarrator lies all the time]] and invents unbelievable embellishments, informs the readers [[ViewersAreMorons whenever he does anything he considers clever with his writing]], at one point plagiarises Wikipedia, and gives long and painfully elaborate descriptions of irrelevant details such as the exact physical way that he opened an envelope containing his A-level results. There is nothing good about his writing whatsoever.

* Daniel Keyes's novel ''Literature/FlowersForAlgernon'' is written in the form of Charlie Gordon's journal. The early (before his intelligence was enhanced) and late ([[TearJerker after the effect wears off]]) entries are written in a barely-literate style indicative of Charlie's mental deficiency.

* In ThePaleKing, part of Chapter 24 is taken from the packet of IRS orientation materials for new hires, which Wallace states is the reason for the dead, bureaucratic flavor of the narration.

* ''{{Push}}'' by Sapphire, later adapted into the film {{Precious}}. [[FunetikAksent The spelling is phonetic and the grammar is similar to speech patterns found in African American Vernacular English]] [[note]] AAVE is also referred to as Ebonics[[/note]] instead of conventional written English. [[spoiler: Her spelling, grammar and overall writing improves as she is placed in a class catering to people with difficulties in reading and writing.]]

** A delicious bit of metafiction, as in all of Fforde's work. At the end of ''Well of Lost Plots'', Spratt's novel is entirely changed by taking on characters from {{nursery rhyme}}s. The book itself was later published ''in real life'' as ''[[NurseryCrime The Big Over Easy]]''. This is inspired, because ''The Big Over Easy'' was in fact the ''first'' novel Fforde wrote. After getting it rejected by many editors, he instead wrote ''The Eyre Affair'', first of the Literature/ThursdayNext books, and it was the success of this that got his original novel published as well. Not content to just publish it, though, he actually wrote it into the main series! And the real novel itself is far from bad, being widely praised, so this ends up a sort of circular subversion.

* Both ''AtlantaNights'' and ''Crack of Death'' were written for submission to PublishAmerica, to test their claim that they were a traditional publisher instead of VanityPublishing. They were both written by a group of authors writing as badly as they could from a minimal outline. Both were accepted, but after the hoax was revealed, PublishAmerica suddenly backed out.

* ''The Fall of the House of Usher'' by EdgarAllanPoe has the horrendously trite story "The Mad Trist".

** The short story "Voice from the Vortex" by Gareth Roberts in ''Magazine/DoctorWhoMagazine'' is a parody of the TheyJustDidntCare stories in the sixties and seventies World Distributors ''Doctor Who'' annuals, with appalling artwork, a nonsensical plot, and characters called "[[IAmNotShazam Dr. Who]]" and "Rosie Taylor" ([[FashionDissonance who wears a mod dress and beehive]]). It also features constant [[CriticalResearchFailure glaring inaccuracies]], like the time machine being called ''Tardis'' and having a rectangular console and making a beeping noise when it takes off; and writing the Ninth Doctor (a terse, witty Mancunian) with the same speech patterns as the First Doctor (a fearsome and formal old man), describing him as wearing a cloak and handbag and being chubby, and having him [[TechnicalPacifist carry a gun]] and cry for no reason. On top of that the prose is riddled with malapropisms and basically ugly verbal constructions and ends with AnAesop that has nothing to do with anything that happened.

* In the AgathaChristie short story collection ''The Thirteen Problems'', each story is narrated by a different member of MissMarple's circle. Mrs Bantry insists she has no talent for storytelling and doesn't understand how [[AllFirstPersonNarratorsWriteLikeNovelists the others do it]]. She demonstrates this by describing the bare facts of the case in a single paragraph and saying she can't go any further without giving away the solution. The bulk of the story consists of the other characters patiently asking questions in order to get details like the names of the suspects or the existence of a LoveTriangle.

* Some of the material in ''HouseOfLeaves'' might fall into this category.

* MarioVargasLlosa's semi-autobiographical novel ''La tia Julia y el escribidor'' (''Literature/AuntJuliaAndTheScriptwriter'') has a structure where intercalates a chapter telling the protagonist story with another being the argument of one of the radial {{Soap Opera}}s written by the eponymous ''scriptwriter'' Pedro Camacho. While the protagonist story is told in a very consistent style, the "Soap" chapters are written in a more grandiloquent style, although not actually ''truly bad'' written. These alternate chapters detail the events going on in the various radio soap operas written by the scriptwriter, who are already very convoluted and filled with a lot of AuthorAppeal and AuthorAvatar meddlings, but become increasingly bizarre as the plots of the separate soap operas start to merge, all thanks to the increasingly unstable mental state of Camacho due to burnout.

* Near the end of ''Literature/TheTerror'' by Creator/DanSimmons the main doctor's journal entries become increasingly incoherent as [[spoiler: he goes insane and finally dies.]]