Bad Writing Advice

[Sea creature]

Go full anime and give lots of descriptions about girls panties, tits and the sort OR if you're feeling adventurous have detailed descriptions of a dudes penis because you know inclusivity.

 

[Elwood P. Dowd]

I wonder if he's ever made anything and how it holds up, honestly. I always laugh when I see a critic fail to measure up to their own standards.

This is why I don't get why people sperg about Hello Future Me's channel. Every video works ATLA into it somehow, he's never written a work of fiction I've heard of and he has some of the oddest takes (Pretty sure he's the one who claims to be a huge Star Trek fan, but has never watched TOS.)

Doubt he gives a fuck what I think, since's the one with a YouTube channel and 600K+ subscribers, but I just don't get it.

 

[Chewy Suarez]

When writing a female character, make sure she gets less time to develop compared to her male counterparts, and even when she’s part of a bloodline with abilities that rival even some of the most skilled members in the ensemble, do absolutely nothing to expand on those powers just so she doesn’t threaten what you’ve established with your male characters. However, if you do show her as a powerful force, make sure it’s only once in a while and not as common as with male characters.

When it comes to writing their goals and ambitions, it’s about men and men only. Their only purpose in the story is to either be under their male counterparts or to please men. When two girls interact, it has to be about competing for a boy that they like or about boys and romance. Avoid writing a female character around something that isn’t a male love interest. Better yet, you can write a female character who doesn’t give a shit about boys, but give more screentime to a swing set instead.

Spoiler

I’m looking at you, Kishimoto.

 

[Krokodil Overdose]

Make the villains multidimensional characters. And have random bystanders, absolutely everyone who isn't one hundred percent pretty and isn't written from a POV perspective a drooling imbecile or a piece o' shit. Remember: the real villains in the story are the demented, belligerent masses. Go out of your way to exact vindictive punishment on undeveloped characters. Make the laws of the universe bend towards their torment. Have objective metaphysical systems that judge whether a person is good or evil and really drive it in how Mr. Rude Merchant is so evil for making a character cry that the villains who literally burned an entire village down last panel are in the right to torture him.

Hi, Mr. Spielberg, welcome to the farms.

 

[Stardust]

Type Like This


Have Paragraphs Seperated Differently
Do Not Use Commas

In Fact Only Use Ellipses...................FOLLOWED BY ALL CAPITALS AND MANY EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!!!






The More You Have The More Intense Your Scene Or Dialogues Will Be!!!!!!!!


Insert Author's Notes To Reinforce Your Writing




Author's Note....................THE ABOVE TIP IS A GREAT IDEA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



Most Importantly End Your Book On A..............THEN NEVER ACKNOWLEDGE IT AGAIN!!!!!!

 

[Doctor Placebo]

Remember, "strong character" is synonymous with "massive belligerent asshole." This is especially true for female characters. You don't want your female characters to be dainty damsels in distress, so compensate by making sure they're always rude, mean, and abrasive to every male character who helps them. If they're in a position of authority, have them expect to be obeyed blindly and without question while doing nothing to win the trust of the people under them. If they aren't in a position of authority, have them always distrust and disobey anyone in a position of authority, no matter how much that person helps them and proves trustworthy and decent. Always have them put their ego above their mission and other people. Have them show little or no remorse if their actions get people killed.

This is the key to writing good, strong female characters.

 

[Pointless Pedant]

Fill your book entirely with orange man bad TDS screeching and references to current politics that will be quickly dated. Write all sympathetic characters as obese black people with a million genders each and all unsympathetic ones as straight white men twiddling their moustaches and sneering "I smirk at your pain!" at dying illegal immigrants. Have Central Americans say "Latinx" even though I've never heard anyone say that in my life. Have absolutely no regard for the laws of nature whatsoever, but claim reality has a liberal bias. Accuse anyone writing about anything they didn't personally experience of cultural appropriation. At no point give any sort of nuance or balance to any arguments, and have characters give lengthy, tiresome Atlas Shrugged style speeches on how straight white male patriarchy must be dismantled and replaced with a global Islamic caliphate.

The book How Not To Write A Novel from the 2000s is a good read for this.

 

[Doctor Placebo]

Fill your book entirely with orange man bad TDS screeching and references to current politics that will be quickly dated. Write all sympathetic characters as obese black people with a million genders each and all unsympathetic ones as straight white men twiddling their moustaches and sneering "I smirk at your pain!" at dying illegal immigrants. Have Central Americans say "Latinx" even though I've never heard anyone say that in my life. Have absolutely no regard for the laws of nature whatsoever, but claim reality has a liberal bias. Accuse anyone writing about anything they didn't personally experience of cultural appropriation. At no point give any sort of nuance or balance to any arguments, and have characters give lengthy, tiresome Atlas Shrugged style speeches on how straight white male patriarchy must be dismantled and replaced with a global Islamic caliphate.

The book How Not To Write A Novel from the 2000s is a good read for this.

Don'twriteknights,princes,princesses,kings,or queensunlessyou'reroyalty.

In fact, never write any character that isn't exactly like you (evil straight white male bigots being the exception of course, someone has to be the villain). Speaking of which, bisexual gender fluid trans characters who don't tolerate no microaggressions and use hip millennial/zoomer social media language will feel totally at home in any setting. Historical fiction, somewhat realistic medieval fantasy, post-apocalyptic setting, you name it. A great way to make a character likable and relatable is to have them prioritize their preferred pronouns above all else while people are having trouble getting food.

 

[Pope Fucker]

Characters don't change and should stay the same as they were in the beginning of the story.

 

[Neurotic Loser]

Characters don't change and should stay the same as they were in the beginning of the story.

Adding to that, characters should never reveal their motives for shit they did in the story as well.
Also characters can change but ONLY for the purpose of progressing the plot and NEVER due to their actions or inactions in the story.

 

[Dave.]

Change your name to Chuck Wendig and kill yourself.

 

[Evian Les Rutabaga]

Characters don't change and should stay the same as they were in the beginning of the story.

Unless you're writing a series, in which case each one should start off in a brand-new love triangle. Don't introduce the new ships until the second act because everyone likes a surprise (like unexplained changes to sexual orientation).

 

[Antipathy]

Remember, your characters are your special babies. You can't have bad things happen to your babies, ever. No matter the odds, they must always escape absolutely unscathed. Create and sacrifice a bit character if people accuse you of favoritism, but never treat that bit character like anything more than a sacrificial lamb.

Remember, this doesn't mean you can't kill your characters, this means you can't hurt them all, ever. Even if they're in knife fights with psychopaths overdosing on speed or at ground zero of an atomic blast or in the quarantine zone of the most lethal disease in history, they must be okay after it!

 

[Amber the Hedgehog]

Don'twriteknights,princes,princesses,kings,or queensunlessyou'reroyalty.

In fact, never write any character that isn't exactly like you (evil straight white male bigots being the exception of course, someone has to be the villain). Speaking of which, bisexual gender fluid trans characters who don't tolerate no microaggressions and use hip millennial/zoomer social media language will feel totally at home in any setting. Historical fiction, somewhat realistic medieval fantasy, post-apocalyptic setting, you name it. A great way to make a character likable and relatable is to have them prioritize their preferred pronouns above all else while people are having trouble getting food.

Also not respecting pronouns, etnic identy or just generally minority issues is great way to show who is evil (just in case an old rich white man wasn't strong enough). Deadnaming, missgendering, not thinking highly of sex work, against BLM and other forms of totally evil and definitely violent bigotry is fine show this way, just remember the trigger warnings. Otherhand good guys are always perfectly up to date about this stuff or the very worse accept the education they get provided early in the story. Also make sure that situations these get mentioned pop up and show the proper response and feelings one should have. This isn't awkward the slightest.

A child meets a new baby sitter and looks at the new adult curiously.
"Are you a boy or a girl?"
"I'm neither."
"You can do that?"
"Yes and I would like you use 'they, them' pronouns about me."
"I can do that."
"Thank you. Let's hug."
They were the coolest adult the child had ever met.

 

[Decepticon Spy]

If you got attached to the side characters, you can have them tag along the main cast even if they have little to no importance nor contribution to the story.

 

[Kosher Dill]

Worldbuilding. Lots and lots of it. Make sure your book's setting is stable when inhabited by parties of 4-6 adventurers level 1-99. In fact, bring your gaming buddies over to game out your setting before you even start writing the book, so you don't make amateur mistakes like "Why can't the Eagles drop the ring into Mount Doom", "Why doesn't the evil vizier just seize the throne if he knows magic and the sultan doesn't", "How come Hogwarts doesn't rule the world", and so on.
Your task as a writer is to stock your world with novelties, and then mathematically solve for the new social equilibrium point these imply.

Once that's done, just write some characters to use all the cool stuff you invented, give them a one-off MacGuffin that breaks the equilibrium. Conjunction of the planets, Chosen One prophecy, whatever.

 

[Antipathy]

If you want a serious setting, everyone must be use the most grim, bleak, and dark shit they can. Orphanages are made out of puppy skulls because of the Great Puppy Genocide, or whatever. Don't ever make jokes in setting, don't make jokes about the setting, and don't make any character even remotely empathetic*.

*Unless you're butchering them in like the next chapter or two for shock.

 

[Decepticon Spy]

Writing a realistic relationship is hard, so screw development and struggles. Shove cute moments, and how much they love each other down your readers throats instead. Bonus points if they're a same sex couple.

 

[Doctor Placebo]

A lot of this advice feels like it's thinly veiled callouts of Neil Druckmann and I can't tell if that's deliberate on everyone's parts or if TLOU2 was just that badly written.

 

[Antipathy]

A lot of this advice feels like it's thinly veiled callouts of Neil Druckmann and I can't tell if that's deliberate on everyone's parts or if TLOU2 was just that badly written.

Make sure to kill, humiliate, or kill and humiliate the beloved character of whatever franchise you managed to get in control of. Bonus points if you then go onto Twitter and call people who dislike your work Nazis.

Am I discussing The Last Jedi or TLOU2? Trick question! The answer is yes.