Line #20 StylisticSuck/Literature


1	* OlderThanPrint: Creator/GeoffreyChaucer had his AuthorAvatar in ''Literature/TheCanterburyTales'' tell the bizarre story of Sir Thopas, a hyperactive Belgian child who spurs his horse until it's a bloody mess. The host cuts off the parody in the middle to complain that it sucks.
2	* 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 (after the effect wears off) entries are written in a barely-literate style indicative of Charlie's mental deficiency.
3	* In ''Literature/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.
4	* In Henry Fielding's novel ''Jonathan Wild'' the various crooks and prostitutes usually speak in a gentle style, but it's essentially implied that Fielding is "translating" their speech for ironic effect, and in one instance, a love note written by Wild is produced which has attrocyous spelng errerz.
5	* Creator/StephenKing:
6	** ''[[Literature/NightmaresAndDreamscapes The End of the Whole Mess]]'', the writer's skill deteriorates as his mental capacity does.
7	** ''Literature/{{Misery}}'':
8	*** The main character, Paul Sheldon, spends most of the book writing a new book in his popular [[ShowWithinAShow Misery series]], and the writing style, while not really worse, is somewhat different. The format of the book within the book also changes as the character's typewriter decays -- it begins in regular type, then a few letters become handwritten, until by the end the entire manuscript is written by hand.
9	*** When Paul is writing his first draft of the new book. Paul utterly despises the [[ShowWithinAShow Misery series]] but is trying to provide his "number one fan" with everything he thinks she loved about the series, including over-the-top, melodramatic dialogue and one-dimensional characters.
10	** ''Literature/TheDarkHalf'': The main character's dead pseudonym comes to life and goes on a killing rampage until the main character agrees to help him write one last novel. That novel begins all right, but by the second chapter, every other word is "sparrow" (sparrows being an ongoing theme in the overall novel.)
11	** "[[Literature/SkeletonCrew Survivor Type]]": The main character is surviving through [[ImAHumanitarian unusual means]] on a barren rock island. He uses heroin to anesthetize himself, and it shows in the journal he is keeping.
12	* Creator/MarioVargasLlosa's semi-autobiographical novel ''La tia Julia y el escribidor'' (''Literature/AuntJuliaAndTheScriptwriter'') intercalates chapters telling the protagonist's 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 more grandiloquently, although not ''truly'' badly 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.
13	* Douglas Coupland's ''The Gum Thief'' features portions of the novel the protagonist is writing, entitled ''Glove Pond''. It's written in a somewhat stilted style, with a bizarre plot and characters and themes clearly based on the author's own life and issues. It's sort of hilarious and pathetic at the same time.
14	* A recurring character in Creator/KurtVonnegut's books is Kilgore Trout, a failing sci-fi writer. The readers are treated with short depictions of his books.
15	* Inverted in Tad Williams's short story ''Writer's Child'' in that the main narrative is purportedly written by a seven-year-old girl using exactly the kind of style you might expect while the excerpts of her father's writing are on another level entirely. Also, the story is not comedy but horror.
16	* ''Caversham Heights'', the unpublished novel where Literature/ThursdayNext takes refuge in ''[[Literature/ThursdayNext The Well Of Lost Plots]]'' is described as being "of dubious merit" and the scenes we see being made bear this out. The novel's main character Jack Spratt worries the whole thing will be deleted.
17	** 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 ''[[Literature/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.
18	* Literature/AdrianMole at some point wrote a book called "Lo! The Flat Hills of My Homeland". In which the protagonist writes another novel, entitled "Sparg from Kronk" (in which the protagonist... writes "a book without language", meaning Adrian Mole creator Sue Townsend ended up writing [[MostWritersAreWriters a book about someone writing a book about someone writing a book about someone writing a book]]). Somehow, both books manage to be ''even worse'' than they sound.
19	* Thomas Pynchon's ''Literature/TheCryingOfLot49'' is full of this, most notably in the forms of a cheesy family film called ''Cashiered'' (with an ending that surely caused nightmares to the fictional audience), a bad rock band who wish they were Music/TheBeatles, and an "ill, ill Jacobean revenge play" called ''The Courier's Tragedy'', which is basically period {{Gorn}}.
20	* ''Literature/TheSoundAndTheFury''. The first section is written from the perspective of a mentally disabled man who moves in and out of flashbacks with no warning, giving no {{expospeak}} of any kind and making it ridiculously difficult to figure out the setting or the character relationships. The second section of the book is written by a student having a nervous breakdown who is apparently opposed to the sentence and constantly refers to something that he well knows never happened. ''Then'' it gets comprehensible, but the third section is about such a monstrous person that it's just a different sort of difficult.
21	* Roger Solmes' writing style in ''Literature/{{Clarissa}}''. He can't spell.
22	* The ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'' ''Literature/CiaphasCain'' novels take the form of Cain's unofficial personal memoirs, which are pretty good. Unfortunately, because of Cain's very narrow focus (he never discusses anything which doesn't DIRECTLY affect him) the editor of these memoirs regularly finds it necessary to include extracts from other sources to fill in the context. Many of these are very poor, ''especially'' the extracts from the memoirs of Jenit Sulla, a retired general who served under Cain in her youth. The editor considers Sulla's writing to be [[PurpleProse so bad]] that she apologizes every time she is forced to refer to it, and regularly encourages readers to skip the extracts if they feel like it. In the first book, information on the history of Gravalax is conveyed through a book called ''Purge The Unclean!'', which claims to be an "unbiased" view of things. The writing is almost a parody of the typical Imperial line as expressed elsewhere in the 40K universe, and the author has a [[GeneralRipper fanatical hatred of rogue traders]]; Vail frequently cuts off the excerpts when he starts blaming them for what's gone wrong.
23	* This is the central conceit of ''Literature/TheIronDream''; Hitler is writing the novel within a novel, ''Lord of the Swastika'', as his brain is rotting away from syphilis. The story is a mess of very DeliberateValuesDissonance, a ClicheStorm plot that makes little sense, repetitive and bland prose, and weird, vaguely fetishistic imagery.
24	* The short story "Witness for the Prosecution" by Q. Patrick is narrated by a [[CreepyChild scary]], possibly slow 11-year-old whose writing is characterized by [[NoPunctuationPeriod minimal punctuation]] and a consistent pattern of misspellings.
25	* 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.''
26	* In the ''Literature/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 think it's ''awful''.
27	* Creator/EdgarAllanPoe:
28	** "Literature/TheFallOfTheHouseOfUsher" has the horrendously trite story "The Mad Trist". The narrator introduces it as "one of [Roderick's] favorite romances", all the while thinking to himself that he only said this to calm Roderick down and that it's a miserable excuse for a romance; he's only reading it because it was the closest book at hand.
29	** ''A Predicament,'' preceded by the context-setting short story, ''How to Write a Blackwood Article.'' In ''Blackwood,'' a magazine editor tells UpperClassTwit Psyche Zenobia the secrets to writing a "sensation" story about madness and death -- in other words, [[SelfDeprecation a story not unlike some of Poe's own work.]] Psyche then goes on to produce a stunningly terrible story filled with [[BlindIdiotTranslation mangled foreign quotations]], {{Narm}}, and a [[{{Gorn}} graphic]] but [[ArtisticLicenseBiology implausible]] description of the narrator's [[BloodlessCarnage decap]][[MadeOfPlasticine itation.]]
30	* 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. ''Literature/NakedCameTheStranger'' 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. The working title of ''Atlanta Nights'' was ''Naked Came the Badfic.''
31	* ''Literature/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy'' uses this trope with regard to the three worst examples of poetry in the universe. Subverted in the radio, print, and film versions; which give no examples of the absolute worst (that of Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings, or Paul Neil Milne Johnston, depending on the version, of Earth) or of the second worst (that of the Azgoths of Kria). The third worst, that of the Vogons, is actually included; but in a form which makes sense in-universe while being complete gibberish to the reader. Played straight in the television series, which includes intelligible examples of the first and second worst as screen text during one of the animated Guide sequences.
32	* ''Literature/TheWorldAccordingToGarp'' features several of T.S. Garp's works. On the whole... not so good.
33	* While stories aren't usually told in this fashion in the ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' books, the [[AnachronismStew semi-medieval]] fantasy setting is played realistically in that the vast majority of people are illiterate or semi-literate, and things like spelling, grammar and punctuation haven't really been standardised yet. Thus, any in-story written document is either in YeOldeButcheredeEnglishe or written like a kindergartner.
34	** Discworld has also named the ''WantonCrueltyToTheCommonComma'' trope.
35	* ''Literature/TheBlackCompany'' 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''.
36	* ''Literature/HowNotToWriteANovel'' includes sample passages at the beginning of each section to clearly demonstrate every faux pas the authors wants people to avoid. Though they are [[RuleOfFunny exaggerated for comedic effect]], they aren't ''that'' exaggerated -- the reason for this book being written in the first place was co-author Howard Mittelmark having worked in publishing and [[SturgeonsLaw rejecting manuscripts with these very problems over, and over, and over]]...
37	* Literature/{{Jennings}}'s attempt to write a detective story:
38	--> Bang! Bang! Bang! Three shots rang out. Two policemen fell dead and the third whistled through his hat.
39	* Noel's poetry in "The Story of the Treasure Seeker's" by E Nesbit, even though the other children think he's a gifted poet.
40	* The last two chapters of the novel "Literature/{{Aliss}}", a macabre retelling of Alice in Wonderland, degenerate into a succession of laconic sentences always ending with an ellipsis. Since the book is written in first person, it's understandable that the style of writing would change after Aliss has been beaten. And shot. And raped.
41	* ''Literature/HouseOfLeaves'' is full of this and arguably competes with the above-mentioned ''The Sound And The Fury'' as one of the defining examples of Stylistic Suck in literature. Each narrator for each of [[NestedStory the five layers of narrative]] have their own specific breed of Stylistic Suck. You might want to get comfortable:
42	** ''The Navidson Record'', the innermost story, doesn't have a narrator but is transcribed secondhand to us, being a [[FoundFootageFilms found footage movie]] about [[DysfunctionJunction the Navidson family]] moving into a bizarre HauntedHouse. It's a genuinely haunting and fascinating film, but also absolutely filled with [[LeaveTheCameraRunning long stretches of nothing happening]], [[RealisticDictionIsUnrealistic realistically awkward dialogue]], JitterCam, and a generally directionless atmosphere, all on top of the fact that it'd have to be five hours long at minimum. This is all offered as evidence that it's genuine and not just a movie, as the LawOfConservationOfDetail is completely and utterly flouted, along with pretty much any other storytelling mechanics; it's like really watching these people go about their actual lives, with all the boring down periods, lack of exposition, and general messiness that implies.
43	** The second layer is a dissertation on ''The Navidson Record'' written by an amateur film critic and self-proclaimed scholar named [[SmallNameBigEgo Zampanò]]. Zampanò tries really hard to act the part of a RenaissanceMan and mostly fails catastrophically, with other characters comparing his work to that of a college freshman who'd get a C- at best. His writing style is smug and self-assured, with him constantly trying to impress with irrelevant precision, overly-lengthy quotations, equally overlong summaries of basic subjects, and expressing his subjective opinions as objective fact, which is all made worse by a tendency to meander off topic while trying to convey his insights. He also makes ''a lot'' of spelling errors and weird formatting choices that hurt the readability of his work. A lot of the problems are only present because the essay as-read is a rough draft that Zampanò was still working on, leading to yet another expression of this trope when you reach multiple sections that were heavily foreshadowed and hyped up as vital to understanding what's going on, [[TheUnreveal only to find placeholder notes from Zampanò reminding himself to write those sections]].
44	** The third layer is the annotations and journals of [[NominalHero Johnny Truant]], a drug addict who finds Zampanò's manuscript and decides to stitch it together, while adding in his own research and additions. His writing actually starts out quite decent, but slowly degrades in quality as [[SanitySlippage his mental state and personal life worsens over the course of the novel]]. He becomes prone to long, rambling diatribes that bleed together and gets much sloppier in terms of spelling and formatting, while also letting his personal diary entries overtake both his own annotations and Zampanò's paper, leading to nonsense like major plot developments in the lower layers being interrupted by Johnny bragging about getting laid. This is compounded by Johnny taking on an increasingly adversarial tone with the reader, attacking and mocking them in his writing, as well as being an UnreliableNarrator of the worst kind who openly admits to regularly lying about what he says happened.
45	** The fourth layer is a series of letters sent to Johnny by his mother [[TheOphelia Pelafina]], who is a paranoid schizophrenic committed to a mental health facility, commenting on his life and journaling her own. Her early writing is perfectly coherent, but as she gets older, her mental illness worsens significantly because of her treatments failing for some reason, and her writing goes down the drain with her mind. Her letters become full of manic rambling, swinging back and forth between raving about the conspiracies she hallucinates everywhere and apologizing for her actions and words when she regains lucidity. Her spelling gets worse as well, and the coherency of her words dissipates slowly but gradually.
46	** The fifth and final layer comes in the form of [[LiteraryAgentHypothesis the Editors of the publishing house]], who have received the insane manuscript formed from the four other layers and been given the unenviable task of putting it all together. They [[InvertedTrope invert]] this trope. Unlike all the madness in the other narratives, [[OnlySaneMan they are sane, normal, and professional people]] and it shows in their writing, which is competent, clean, and succinctly efficient. They genuinely try their best to present the reader with all the available facts in a way that's understandable. Their work is obviously made difficult by the nature of the other layers, and there ends up being more than one situations where they just throw up their hands and say "your guess is as good as ours". In general, their attempts to apply a MindScrewdriver to the novel are admirable but unsuccessful. [[MindScrew Good luck figuring it out yourself]].
47	* Near the end of ''Literature/TheTerror'' by Creator/DanSimmons the main doctor's journal entries become increasingly incoherent as [[spoiler: he slowly dies of an overdose after being DrivenToSuicide.]]
48	* In the ''Literature/SmokeAndShadows'' trilogy, the main cast is constantly beset by all manner of supernatural shenanigans, from evil wizards to demons, and the main character, Tony, has an even longer history including everything that might possibly go bump in the night. But no threat of death or insanity is worse than when their reality gets as vapid and cliched as the horrid Vampire Detective Show they all work for.
49	* In ''Literature/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.
50	* Lenskiy's romantic poem in Creator/AlexanderPushkin's ''Literature/EugeneOnegin'' is a ClicheStorm.
51	* In the Literature/TimeScout series, most things in the past were handmade, and most people paid attention to things like clothes and weapons. Therefor, a scout's, guide's, or tourist's gear has to mimic the imperfections of handmade equipment.
52	* Creator/MarkTwain ''loved'' this trope. Consider the writings of Emmeline Grangerford in ''Literature/TheAdventuresOfHuckleberryFinn''. ([[AvertedTrope Averted]] in a notable scene in ''Literature/TheAdventuresOfTomSawyer''--after we're treated to the [[{{Narm}} hilariously dreadful]] essays and poetry of the girls at Tom's school, Twain admits that [[TakeThat he got them all from an actual book]].)
53	* The romance novels of Rosie M. Banks in Creator/PGWodehouse's books.
54	* ''Literature/{{Push}}'' by Sapphire. [[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.]]
55	* In the Creator/AgathaChristie short story collection ''The Thirteen Problems'', each story is narrated by a different member of Literature/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.
56	* A variation: In ''Literature/LettersToHisSon'', British statesman Lord Chesterfield deliberately writes in a way to demonstrate how not to write English: "MY LORD: I HAD, last night, the honor of your Lordship's letter of the 24th; and will SET ABOUT DOING the orders contained THEREIN; and IF so BE that I can get that affair done by the next post, I will not fail FOR TO give your Lordship an account of it by NEXT POST. I have told the French Minister, AS HOW THAT IF that affair be not soon concluded, your Lordship would think it ALL LONG OF HIM; and that he must have neglected FOR TO have wrote to his court about it. I must beg leave to put your Lordship in mind AS HOW, that I am now full three quarter in arrear; and if SO BE that I do not very soon receive at least one half year, I shall CUT A VERY BAD FIGURE; FOR THIS HERE place is very dear. I shall be VASTLY BEHOLDEN to your Lordship for THAT THERE mark of your favor; and so I REST or REMAIN, Your, etc." (EMPHASIS as in the original)
57	* ''Franchise/DoctorWhoExpandedUniverse'':
58	** The short story "Voice from the Vortex" by Gareth Roberts in ''Magazine/DoctorWhoMagazine'' is a parody of the lousy 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 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.
59	** ''The Angel's Kiss Starring Melody Malone'' is written in an over-the-top {{Camp}}y PrivateEyeMonologue style with [[FanDisservice painfully unsexy sexy bits]], and occasionally stops the plot dead to focus on in-universe AuthorAppeal elements, like the fashion, and how sexy and fashionable all the male characters are and how much they all fancy Melody Malone, and [[HerCodenameWasMarySue how sexy and fashionable Melody Malone is]].
60	* In ''[[Literature/BernieRhodenbarr The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling]]'' by LawrenceBlock, the {{MacGuffin}} is a FictionalDocument called ''The Deliverance of Fort Bucklow'', which is supposedly rare and valuable because it's so bad that, after recovering from his FilibusterFreefall, the author destroyed as many copies as he could in shame. To prove that he has the book, Bernie has to read out passages, which are appropriately horrible.
61	* A character in ''Literature/LoveDishonorMarryDieCherishPerish'' gives a toast in poorly metered, ostensibly rhymed verse. It is the only part of Creator/DavidRakoff's VerseNovel in which a character is overtly reciting poetry except for a brief quotation from Creator/OscarWilde, and the only horrible poetry in the book.
62	* ''Literature/IPartridgeWeNeedToTalkAboutAlan'' is made of this trope. It's the "autobiography" of the character Franchise/AlanPartridge, 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 [[PlagiarismInFiction plagiarises]] Website/{{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.
63	* OlderThanFeudalism: Eumolpus in ''Literature/TheSatyricon'', an absolutely awful poet who is [[GiftedlyBad nevertheless convinced he is a genius philosopher]]. We hear plenty of his bad poetry throughout his sections of the story, and it is so bad that other people usually pelt him with rocks to make him stop. [[ParodyDisplacement It was probably a parody of now-lost Roman poetry the contemporary audience would have recognised]].
64	* The dialogue to Charlie's play in ''Literature/ClocksThatDontTick'' is nothing short of terrible. The [[BloodSport very real violence]] that occurs after said dialogue makes it stand out even more.
65	* The fictional poet Jason Strugnell, created by the very talented poet and parodist Wendy Cope, mimics the style of the great poets, but has a tin ear for imagery that results in him either using inappropriate metaphors (calling the sun "the glorious Football in the East" in ''Strugnell's Rubaiyat'') or using high-flown phrases to describe his very ordinary life in a London suburb.
66	* ''Literature/{{Room}}'' by Emma Donaghue is told from the perspective of a five year old boy. The novel is filled with intentionally bad grammar and sentence structure, to truly emphasize the narrator's mindset.
67	* ''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 present-tense Stream-of-consciousness fashion.
68	* In Creator/PiersAnthony's novel ''Firefly''; to repay in part Geode's kindness to her, Oenone tells him stories she invents on the spot. One time when she is not available he dreams she is telling him a story and it's in a completely different style, very disjointed and nearly incomprehensible. In the Author's Afterword Anthony says it was written by a man imprisoned for pedophilia.
69	* In ''Literature/DrawingABlank'', Carlton's comic book of Signy the Superbad occasionally appear between chapters as he draws them. The artwork and dialog are stilted, the plot is thin, and most the female characters are improbably large-breasted, i.e. just the sort of comic book a teenager might draw for fun.
70	* The Danish poet Per Barfoed (1890 - 1939) was a master of StylisticSuck, writing under the pen name ''P. Sørensen-Fugholm'', a fictional amateur poet and laundry owner. Fugholm's poems are goldmines of comical misspellings, tortured rhymes, SophisticatedAsHell, and unintentional (and frequently risqué) {{double entendre}}s. A high point is Fugholm's homage to "[[UsefulNotes/BenitoMussolini Mr. Dictator Mussolini]], [[UsefulNotes/FascistItaly Italy]]",[[note]]which parodies the widespread fascination with fascism in intellectual circles at the time[[/note]] whom he lauds as "the greatest organist of our time" for the way he and his "faksists" put an end to the "koas" in Italy. He gushes to the big man about how:
71	-->
72	--> as glowing fire from your eyes did shoot
73	--> all flabbiness you tore up by its root
74	-->
75	and wishes that Denmark be sent a Mussolini too, because:
76	--> the pointless nonsense flourish in our land
77	--> as you will know if you have read my poems.
78	--> Tra-la-la!
79	* In ''Literature/TheMachineriesOfEmpire'', the [[ShowWithinAShow dramas]] that Cheris is watching are {{troperiffic}} to the point of being unintentionally (at least in-universe) hilarious.
80	* The parody newspaper ''Trangviksposten'' (''Narrowbay Daily'' or something like that) was a hilarious parody of Norwegian narrowmindedness, presenting a fictional town to the east of Norway, including no less than two poets who both fit the trope - one male, and one female. The last one, called Thora Berg, who wrote under the nome de plume ''Bergthora'', became memetic, and lended her name to a Whole genre of Norwegian "housewife poetry".
81	* ''Literature/AkashicRecordsOfBastardMagicInstructor'' has two examples:
82	** A famous author mentions writing such a novel in the past, before he'd developed his writing skills. The unpublished manuscript was so bad that he remained as a ghost after he died, afraid of someone else reading it. We don't see any samples of the writing, but it's described as a parody of the typical plot of many Main/LightNovels: a main character who's inexplicably powerful, has a harem of girls despite being antisocial, is able to easily persuade a villain to atone, and is showered with praise by others.
83	** Sistine writes her own novel, and this is shown to the reader. The main character's name is "Mistine", she's beautiful and intelligent, she has numerous men in love with her while not showing interest in them, and among these men is her own teacher. Said teacher (who is blatantly based on Sistine's actual teacher whom she's {{Tsundere}} towards) even says that he'd prefer to be called "Mistine's beloved one" instead of his actual name.
84	* ''Literature/{{Reamde}}'': Dodge has hired a very prolific fantasy author to crank out spin-off novels for his MassivelyMultiplayerOnlineGame. The author is described as a hack several times before we see an example of his writing, and it's got humorously PurpleProse.
85	* In ''Children of the Lens'', our hero Kimball Kinnison has to pose as a SpaceOpera pulp writer. We get an excerpt of his work which [[SelfParody manages to be even more hammy]] than anything else Creator/EEDocSmith could come up with.
86	* Many--maybe even ''most''-- of the conversations in ''Literature/Catch22'' are far too long, repetitive, disjointed to the point of being nonsensical, and [[SeinfeldianConversation generally end up going absolutely nowhere (or even backwards).]] It's all too easy to see how a perfectly normal person could go completely insane just by hanging out with Yossarian and his comrades.
87	* ''Literature/LukeSkywalkerAndTheShadowsOfMindor'' features snippets of "Luke Skywalker and the Jedi's Revenge", an [[ShowWithinAShow in-universe biopic/period piece]] retelling the events of [[Franchise/StarWars the movies]]. It was made without the permission of Luke or anybody else that took part in said events, and it shows; HamAndCheese acting all over, the sort of writing you see in every crappy "[[DracoInLeatherPants the Empire did nothing wrong]]" fanfic ever made, and [[VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory historical inaccuracies]] so mind-bogglingly offensive it somehow warps back around to being [[CrossesTheLineTwice hilarious]] (Anakin Skywalker is depicted heroically dying in defense of the same little kids he ''brutally murdered'' in ''Film/RevengeOfTheSith''). [[spoiler:Oh, and it's also a PropagandaPiece created by [[BigBad Cronal]] as phase one of an EvilPlan to take over the galaxy. Apparently good filmmaking is not one of the unnatural abilities the Dark Side grants people.]]
88	* ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'' is intended to resemble mythology and ancient chronicles. This leads to some confusing moments: like when Gildor Inglórion introduces himself as "of the House of Finarfin", as if he expects that to mean something. Many first time readers will stop and go scouring through the book to see what they've missed: but the answer is nothing. Nor does this detail matter for the story. It's a deliberate violation of the LawOfConservationOfDetail, for the purpose of style. Though if you simply cannot continue reading without knowing, the answer to your most burning questions can be found in the Appendices. This is a common thing in myths, a character will introduce themselves as being related to a character who isn't part of the current story: but the audience would be expected to know. Except here, the real audience doesn't know. However, the story isn't written for any real audience: not only does its author exist in the fictional world, but its intended audience does as well. While this leads to some very weird narrative structure, it also has the rather nice side effect of not making any reader feel excluded or included. Again, the point here is to invoke the feeling of this being mythology. It makes the act of reading the text feel almost rebellious in a weird way, precisely because it ''doesn't'' cater to you...whoever you might be.
89	* Creator/HarlanEllison wrote ''Literature/RepentHarlequinSaidTheTicktockman'' partly as a protest against conventional "rules of good writing", and run-on sentences are not uncommon in the story.
90	* ''Literature/StickDog'': All of the drawings are done in a very primitive style. All the dogs are drawn with the same boxy body type to highlight it. The drawings of humans are more detailed, though.
91	** The same applies to the ''Literature/StickCat'' series. Though Stick Cat's head is drawn as a circle, the same for Edith's head and body.
92	* ''Literature/JaineAustenMysteries'': A lot of fictional work Jaine comes across is so clearly terrible.
93	** "Do Not Disturb"[[note]]Styled and even eventually published as "Do Not Distub"[[/note]] from ''Killer Cruise'' is a prime example. Jaine is forced to edit the manuscript of a crewman named Samoa to keep Prozac's being on the ship a secret. Long story there. Anyhoo, the thing is a woefully ridiculous tale of a steward who foils a terrorist plot while performing his steward duties. The tale has him disarming a nuclear device with a plunger, the protagonist is clearly based on him (his name is Samoa Huffington III) as a [[MarySue Gary Stu]] with a [[BiggerIsBetterInBed huge penis]] and ends with him riding off in the [[CoolCar "Samoa mobile"]]. For a kick in the ass, it becomes a New York Times bestseller and gets a movie adaptation starring Creator/AntonioBanderas (albeit with them describing it as absurdist literature).
94	* ''Literature/DiaryOfAWimpyKid'': The Do-It-Yourself book features comic strips by some of the characters. Most of them fall under this. In Rowley's strip ''Action Fighterz'', the only action was one character hitting the other with a FryingPanOfDoom. The rest of the page is just them discussing what's about to happen.
95	* One of the running gags in ''Literature/TheFinishingSchoolSeries'' is Agatha's habit of wearing very fancy and expensive dresses that are ''exactly'' the wrong cut and color for her. It isn't until the revelation near the end of the fourth book that [[spoiler: Agatha has been in service to Lord Ackledama - who is notorious for having particularly good fashion sense even for a vampire - since she arrived at the school that Sophronia realizes that Agatha had been picking such tacky dresses on purpose to encourage even her friends to underestimate her]].
96	* Done in-universe to make a point in ''Literature/TheFootprintOfMussolini''. [[spoiler:When the Soviet Union attempts a MoonLandingHoax, the editor they choose for the resulting film, Pavel Klushantev, is disgusted with the leaders of his country for sinking so low. In response, he deliberately botches the job, making it blatantly obvious that the film is fake.]]
97	* The children’s book ''45 + 47 Stella Street and everything that happened'' is framed as if it were [[DirectLineToTheAuthor a true story written by its first-person narrator]], 11-year-old Henni Octon. The story does things like randomly switching between past and present tense, and sometimes has Henni’s narration go on tangents about writing the book (such as one instance where she fixates on the use of “cried” as a dialogue tag).
98	* "Born Of Man And Woman" by Creator/RichardMatheson is [[EpistolaryNovel written as if it were the journal]] of a monstrously deformed (''[[HumanoidAbomination literally]]'') child who is kept locked up in its parents basement and abused by them, treated like an animal and hidden from the world. The resulting text is about what you'd expect from an insane, inhuman, and childlike creature who has received little to no education or proper rearing whatsoever; their language and writing is ''awful'', with almost nonexistent grammar, bad punctuation, and equally terrible spelling, as well as a lot of odd synonyms and turns of phrase born out of the child having very little knowledge of the outside world (e.g., it refers to other children as "little mothers and little fathers", an extension of using "father and mother" as terms for gender).

Context StylisticSuck / Literature