When I get annoyed with bad writing...

...my comments get briefer and snarkier.  To wit:

This one's for you, C...

Reader Reports

Jennifer Nickerson
September, 2010

[sep paragraphs refer to sep pieces]

A grotesque but compelling story of a woman anchored to her bed by a 195 lb. tumor, and what she is compelled to do when her husband and caretaker goes missing one night; this could have been – should have been – exploitative and voyeuristic, but it ended up being really rather sweet and uplifting. Needs some copy-editing, but the story is sound.

Funny, in its own grotesque way – there is an actual bearded lady. I’m honestly not sure if I “got” everything the author was aiming for (I think there might have been a layer of meaning I couldn’t quite reach), but the story is sweet, and relatable, and definitely memorable.

Nice exploration of the few minutes it takes a man to shoot some wild dogs on his property, and the lifetime of experiences that it takes to make up the way he feels in doing it.

I like the way it plays around with (dances around, maybe?) a vague Southern gothic sense (the genteel man-eaters – figurative, if not literal – of the title) but the ending bombs out quietly. I’m not sure if I either completely didn’t understand it, or understood it and just wasn’t impressed, but I don’t know if the necessary revisions would be minor enough to get past the author’s ego. Stronger in the first part of the story, then gradually slips in quality towards the end – the author starts spelling out things that don’t need to be (and shouldn’t be) spelled out.

Hits you over the head with “atmosphere” (saloon setting, saloon stock characters, saloon dialogue), but the story is interesting and engaging,.

Pretty little story about an adult woman returning to ballet; sensual, with the swish of a silken skirt and the blood and sweat dripping from toe shoes and leotards. Pretty and gritty might be a better description – the death of a dream is in the mix, too, along with all those fluids.

Quietly significant story of a new marriage tested by literally crippling disease and the struggle to build and maintain a family. Serious, but with flashes of humor, and sympathetic throughout.

Sad but pretty tale of the toll an infant’s death takes on a family.

Mildly funny with flashes of something deeper, but would need extensive pruning.

About ¼ good, ¾ pointless. The story of an wife at an excruciatingly uncomfortable business dinner could have been interesting, at least funny, and there were moments, but the boorish chauvinist character that could have been quickly and easily drawn was instead a hulking presence in nearly every other line, over-drawn well into the realm of caricature, although some of that was clearly intentional (I hope), meant to make a point.

Adventures in gentrification – nothing terribly exciting and new, but what is there is well-done. The main character is decently drawn, with believable and relatable reactions to the circumstances and events of the story.

The younger version of the characters from “I Miss My Friends,” more or less. We’ve seen it before, but the writing is decent. Something else from this author might be better.

Not entirely sure where to rank this: I liked the story (not great, but good more or less engaging) but it seemed really pretty derivative of Audrey Niffenegger’s “Her Fearful Symmetry” – the basic idea of a spirit floating around, observing her recently-deceased corpse, for sure, but also something about the tone and style. I can’t quite pin it down, but it was an immediate response, and one that makes me uncomfortable about recommending this piece too much. Maybe if the reincarnation angle were played up more it would feel different.

Decent premise and setting, but very predictable.

I can’t speak to its accuracy, but the generals are kind of funny, and ring true for a history graduate degree, certainly. The content isn’t as good as the way it’s written.

Needs to be taken apart in chunks and then pieces back together in a different order, and then it might be good.

Somewhat funny story about the desperation of suburban life – and when that desperation leads to hit men. Nothing special, but cute. Terribly boring, though; needs some clear-cutting.

Mildly amusing story about traveling by plane with babies in two. Funny, but forgettable. Semi-universal, in so far as many of us have been there or seen it, but no insights of humor that make the familiarity anything more than just that.

Utterly predictable, which might not necessarily be a bad thing, but in this case it’s also about ¾ too long, even if the grinding repetitiveness is meant to be a style.

Could have been an interesting story, but over (and none too carefully) written. Would require massive editing, and feels more like a prospective screenplay than an essay.

Boring story about two old men and their views on life, love, and literary works, that tries to hard to be something more than it is.

It’s helpful we have male authors to teach us things like all women who get divorced are castrating bitches who will continue to insist their ex-husbands are violent alcoholics even after the latter start turning their lives around. Not terrible, I guess.

Brief episode in the life of a divorcing man living on his run-down boat who learns to care because of a bird – I guess? Boring.

Trying too hard, and the “surprise” ending isn’t – but not terribly written, the author might have some promise, even if the piece doesn’t.

Should have been funny, or maybe interesting, but just dies a slow, quiet death.

Familiar and boring for the most part.

It’s hard to focus on the plot since the name of a primary character is alternately “Ray” and “Roy” throughout the nineteen pages of text. A less charitable inclined person might ask why we should bother reading the author’s story for content, since he so obviously didn’t bother to read it for typos.

Brings up lots of questions, like “is there a point in writing a story that makes pointed social commentary that has frequently been made before?” and “do characters have to have more than one dimension?”

Suggests the same questions as “[above]” but it takes on bigger issues and is even more obvious.

Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, and Ford Madox Ford all hanging out in France. This is a squashed fly on the wall perspective – we learn nothing and feel like we need to go find a tissue to clean up the mess.

Goes nowhere except to some strange literary graveyard where adverbs and adjectives go to die, piled up like elephant bones in sad heaps. Over-worked and over-written, with some weird affectation of writing “an” for “and” in lines of dialogue.

Sections are introduced by song quotes.

This is a introductory chapter of a non-fiction book on religion. And a bad one, at that.