(no subject)
You all think you've seen bad writing?
May I present Atlanta Nights by Travis Tea (which makes the Lytton Bulwer entries seem positively sublime).
Background: It was actually written by a string of professional authors (and Teresa Nielsen Hayden) who weren't terribly fond of PublishAmerica (a Vanity Press/scam publisher* masquerading as a publisher) and wanted to destruct-test the supposed editorial process.
From Teresa Nielsen Hayden's review:
The prose is an education all by itself. The chapter numbering has to be seen to be believed. Watch out for the two wildly disparate chapters written by two different authors who were independently working from the same segment of plot outline. Then there are the characters who die in one chapter and wander back into the action in a later one, and the characters that idly change race, gender, and motivation (it was a very sparse plot outline). Space, time, and causality are trifled with shamelessly. The especially beloved and completely incoherent Chapter 34 was written by a text generator that had been fed some earlier chapters.
But the book's moment of true genius comes, not when one of the characters wakes up and realizes that all of the foregoing chapters were a dream, but when that happens AND THEN THE BOOK CONTINUES ANYWAY.
You can buy it in hardcopy from Lulu as Publish America didn't go through with the publication after the scam was revealed (but did offer a contract before that)
I'm currently reading it and my brain is dribbling out of my ears. To be that bad at writing, you've got to be good.
* Just a harmless bit of googlebombing...
May I present Atlanta Nights by Travis Tea (which makes the Lytton Bulwer entries seem positively sublime).
Background: It was actually written by a string of professional authors (and Teresa Nielsen Hayden) who weren't terribly fond of PublishAmerica (a Vanity Press/scam publisher* masquerading as a publisher) and wanted to destruct-test the supposed editorial process.
From Teresa Nielsen Hayden's review:
The prose is an education all by itself. The chapter numbering has to be seen to be believed. Watch out for the two wildly disparate chapters written by two different authors who were independently working from the same segment of plot outline. Then there are the characters who die in one chapter and wander back into the action in a later one, and the characters that idly change race, gender, and motivation (it was a very sparse plot outline). Space, time, and causality are trifled with shamelessly. The especially beloved and completely incoherent Chapter 34 was written by a text generator that had been fed some earlier chapters.
But the book's moment of true genius comes, not when one of the characters wakes up and realizes that all of the foregoing chapters were a dream, but when that happens AND THEN THE BOOK CONTINUES ANYWAY.
You can buy it in hardcopy from Lulu as Publish America didn't go through with the publication after the scam was revealed (but did offer a contract before that)
I'm currently reading it and my brain is dribbling out of my ears. To be that bad at writing, you've got to be good.
* Just a harmless bit of googlebombing...