How to Write Badly

Let's face it, there's no way books on how to write are going to help you write better. And it'll take forever for you to write better by practicing. So let's just give up trying to write well, why don't we, and learn how to write badly?

Use horrible spelling and grammar. In fact, if you want to go a bit further, use netspeak. Always leave out vital punctuation marks and forget to capitalize, or if you must, capitalize in the wrong places. Instead of,

"This is how you really play." He lifted the violin to his chin and set it on his shoulder, placing two fingers down on one of the strings. Lifting the delicate bow carefully, he stroked the first note.

Write,

"th1s is h0w y0u really play, he Lifted the v1olyn to his ch1n and set it 0n his shouder, placing 2 fingers down on stryngs lifting the delicut bow cairfuly, he struked the 1st n0te.

Look how horrible that is! It used bad spelling, grammar, netspeak, capitalized in the wrong places, and left out punctuation marks! Wow!

For format, forget seperating different thoughts into paragraphs and checking over your document in case Fictionpress squashed together some of the words. Just write the entire thing in one big block! Overuse bold, italicize, and underline a LOT!!!Don't even make the title separate!

Also, stick AN's BEFORE the start of the fic, even though it annoys people, and even put AN's in between sentences in the story, commenting on it, like,

He grasped her hands in his and brought them to his face. (AN: OMG! Is he gonna kiss her?)

"I love you." He said simply, and bringing their hands down to their sides, he leaned forward and (AN: Wait for it, wait for it!)

She smacked him.

"Keep your hands to yourself, you pervy cook." The princess ordered and stalked off, leaving the overly obese and ridiculous cook behind. (AN: Haha!)

Even though it cuts off the flow of the story, so what? Writing is for expressing your opinions, isn't it?

Don't ever, ever put effort into your characters. Just copy off someone else's character that you think is cool, change their eye color, hair color, or even their gender, and maybe their name, and stick them in a different world!

If you think the situation requires it, have your character act totally out of character so the scene is heartbreakingly sappy/sad or really funny. Oh, and even when it's in the POV of one character, make it so other character's thoughts are heard in your writing.

If you truly must make your own character, at least make him or her perfect. Give the perfect guy muscles, awesome teeth, total HAWTNESS, great hair, and all sorts of awesome abilities, like the ability to make everyone fall in love with them, even straight guys and homosexual women. Do the same for girls except without the muscles (although they're still super-strong) and change around the genders for the ability to make everyone fall in love with them.

Give your character names like Jane Doe or John Smith, really common ones, or really freaky made-up ones like Surahsaejbdj1 the Third so long that the reader can't remember it. Then use names like that for everyone else in the story.

There really is no point in thinking up your own original plot. In fact, since the plot worked so well for J.K. Rowling and Mark Twain and the dude who wrote Lord of the Rings and Eoin Colfer, why not take their plot and subsitute your own characters?

Harriet just found out she's the Girl Who Lived and that she's a witch! Now she must attend Sowpimples, the famous wizarding school, but there's like, totally a whole lot of evil there waiting to kill her!

(Note: Sow is the opposite of Hog, and Pimples has some sort of relation to Warts.)

Or maybe even,

Meet Apollo Beast, girl genius. She's discovered that (gasp!) Oompa Loompas DO exist, but they're not cute little orange midgets. They're evil big things with GUNS! And brains! BRAINS! Run for your life and cower in a closet until Apollo saves the day, even if you are a capable captain in the army! You gotta let the girl have her moments!

Boisenberry Wing.

Now THERE's a bestseller, yeah.

Now grab your favorite story plot and go!

Don't ever SHOW. TELL.

She had long blonde hair and green eyes. She was 6 feet tall. She was twenty-nine years old. She had worked at several different jobs before this one. She liked bananas.

See? SEE? Look at its supreme badness! JUST LOOK AT IT!

Make your events poorly linked, and jump from place to place and from time to time with absolutely NO indication of why or how. Just do it. And speed by the important events and spend excruciating paragraphs on the minor events.

Use lots of fangirl language. If you're writing a romance, use some unimportant thing to make the two main characters realize they're perfect for each other.

Pile on the adjectives, yeah! Overdescribe everything!

And that's the end of my guide on how to write badly. If there's anything else you want to add, just tell me.