Jul 05 2008
Bad Authorial Excuse of the Day
Reviewer: I like your work, but I think that [some aspect of your writing] is flawed.
Author: Oh, that? I meant to do that.
Reviewer: Ahh… do you think you could fix it?
Author: But that would ruin the style of the piece!
Deliberately inflicting substandard writing on your story for “stylistic” or “literary” purposes is usually a prelude to rejection. If your reviewers were able to discern that it was either stylish or literary, they wouldn’t be complaining about it.
Here are a few areas that are especially prone to intentionally bad writing…