What Do You Think Makes A Bad Author?

[PancakesWitch]

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?

 

[RepresentingEnvy]

I think "bad writing" is writing that isn't understandable to any audience. I'd say to be comprehensible. Other than that, I didn't start writing for readers. I have primarily written for myself. I wasn't going to share my writings until I discovered ScribbleHub. The readers are super important to me but aren't the main reason I write.

 

[PancakesWitch]

I think "bad writing" is writing that isn't understandable to any audience. I'd say to be comprehensible. Other than that, I didn't start writing for readers. I have primarily written for myself. I wasn't going to share my writings until I discovered ScribbleHub. The readers are super important to me but aren't the main reason I write.

That's true, I started writing for myself and ended making money out of it, at some point i tried to write for my readers, but that ended badly and I wrote novels I never enjoyed writing, which made me stressed and made me hate writing.
I changed now and only write for myself, i still earn money anyways, seems like there will always be people that will like what you write even if you dont target any audience in specific.
Unless it is for grammar and structure, I usually just ignore most complains about characters and so, I always write my characters how they are intentionally. I often see that readers think that characters acting flawed, dumb, or commiting mistakes is somehow an "error from the author" and that we are writing badly because we make flawed, human characters.
As I write over the years, I've come to the realization readers nowadays are hyper fixated with being pleased as they read, conflicting ideologies, clash between characters, discussions, mistakes, and so on are things they dont like on stories, they want everything to be "feel good" and never to go awry, unless it is just for more action to ensue and end fine anyways.

 

[CarburetorThompson]

Anyone I don’t like is a bad author

 

[beast_regards]

Is it the time when they tell you that you have been a bad author, spank you, and put their big fat warning points in your profile and then....

 

[RepresentingEnvy]

That's true, I started writing for myself and ended making money out of it, at some point i tried to write for my readers, but that ended badly and I wrote novels I never enjoyed writing, which made me stressed and made me hate writing.
I changed now and only write for myself, i still earn money anyways, seems like there will always be people that will like what you write even if you dont target any audience in specific.
Unless it is for grammar and structure, I usually just ignore most complains about characters and so, I always write my characters how they are intentionally. I often see that readers think that characters acting flawed, dumb, or commiting mistakes is somehow an "error from the author" and that we are writing badly because we make flawed, human characters.
As I write over the years, I've come to the realization readers nowadays are hyper fixated with being pleased as they read, conflicting ideologies, clash between characters, discussions, mistakes, and so on are things they dont like on stories, they want everything to be "feel good" and never to go awry, unless it is just for more action to ensue and end fine anyways.

I think it's better that way. At some point, I was also too focused on the readers. I questioned whether I was even writing things for myself. However, I can safely say now that I am writing for myself. I don't write perfect characters.

It's impossible to please everyone anyway, so the best place to start is with yourself. If you write perfect characters, the readers who want realism will complain or call you a scared author or whatever. And if you write flawed characters, they will drop as soon as the protagonist meets one road bump. It will always be a catch-22.

 

[Toast2Venus]

I don't know but every Author I know here seems pretty chill, everyone is trying their best, can't say there are bad Authors just bad stories...

 

[TheEldritchGod]

Mostly Carbon, Oxygen, Hydrogen, Nitrogen.

 

[HungrySheep]

There are no bad authors. People who take time and effort out of their day to write a novel don't deserve to be shit on. The contents of the novel can be bad, but criticism and negative comments shouldn't be directed to the author themselves. Someone can write the most garbage plot ever, but it doesn't make the author garbage. Just the novel.

Just as you salute the rank and not the person, you can acknowledge the author without enjoying the novel.

 

[beast_regards]

It's impossible to please everyone anyway, so the best place to start is with yourself. If you write perfect characters, the readers who want realism will complain or call you a scared author or whatever. And if you write flawed characters, they will drop as soon as the protagonist meets one road bump. It will always be a catch-22.

Strange game. Only winning move is not to play.

 

[melchi]

The term "bad author" is rather subjective isn't it?

If someone writes NTR then wouldn't people who don't like NTR consider that person a bad author?

Maybe the exception would be spelling errors, grammar errors or stuff that is too hard to follow.

 

[HungrySheep]

The term "bad author" is rather subjective isn't it?

If someone writes NTR then wouldn't people who don't like NTR consider that person a bad author?

Maybe the exception would be spelling errors, grammar errors or stuff that is too hard to follow.

It's pretty subjective yeah. I'd say even spelling/grammar errors don't matter as I've seen quite a few novels on various sites meet great success in spite of such errors.

 

[PancakesWitch]

I don't know every Author I know here seems pretty chill, everyone is trying their best, can't say there are bad Authors just bad stories...

I guess i speak more from my experience here in various sites, readers tend to call the author for their "mistakes" and often refer to them as bad authors if they dont write what they want.
I remembee my experience with royal road authors, theyre very scared of readers and are always desperate to please them.

 

[HungrySheep]

I guess i speak more from my experience here in various sites, readers tend to call the author for their "mistakes" and often refer to them as bad authors if they dont write what they want.
I remembee my experience with royal road authors, theyre very scared of readers and are always desperate to please them.

That's because Royal Road readers are the scariest. There are some scary readers on SH too sometimes, but not too often. The nicest readers are mostly on Webnovel, but I think that stems from the general age bracket of readers.

Comments don't come often on Wattpad, but they're usually nice too.

 

[Gryphon]

What makes a bad author is two things.

A: Their works are uncreative dribble that steals more than creates.

B: They obviously have no passion in there work.

I think point A is obvious. The story they write feels more like they just took chunks out of other best sellers and repackaged them in their own stories.

Point B has a bit more debate on what makes a work or author seem impassionate. Some people will say that monetary gain is the cause for why works can feel bankrupt, but wanting some dough can lead to passion just as easily as wanting to create something for the sake of creating. It just so happens that passion comes from wanting some green paper.

 

[K5Rakitan]

Bad authors procreate and leave their readers hanging while they breastfeed the offspring and try to teach it to read. These authors are so bad that I recommend giving them 1-star reviews if you ever find any of them.

 

[RepresentingEnvy]

Bad authors procreate and leave their readers hanging while they breastfeed the offspring and try to teach it to read. These authors are so bad that I recommend giving them 1-star reviews if you ever find any of them.

You can't keep getting away with this!

 

[georgelee5786]

Poor characters, contrived plot, deus ex machina, the like

 

[Shard]

I've seen a number of bad authors, but they aren't just because you dislike what they write. Stuff like half the words being misspelled, including their title. Or zero punctuation. Or one who wrote 'chapters' one sentence long, and was praising hitler and genocide. That guy got banhammered at least.

Stories you don't like don't mean the author is bad, nor that they should get low ratings, in my opinion at least. I've seen many stories I disliked that were high quality. I'd say tons of plot holes might be a sign of a bad author as well, but weird plot or non-existent, perfect or flawed characters, genre, setting, etc, those don't, as they are a matter of preference.

 

[HeavenlyKillerStar]

idk man honestly to be a bad author i think you just have to be surprisingly uncreative, like nobody wants to read a bootleg jjk tf and you have to really not care about your story, but both of those things are hard to not do, maybe im just an uncreative idiot but either way just put some love into your novel then it’ll be at the bare minimum slightly below decent depending on your experience idk