There is a lot of crap out there. Consider this a brief field guide to identifying crap in some of its myriad forms.

Today’s a shorter list, but we’ve included examples. Enjoy.

25 Signs You’re Reading a Piece of Crap

  1. An unexpected moral bursts onto the page. “The villain was defeated. Don’t do drugs.”
  2. The story takes forever to get going. “Meanwhile, on page 114, the conflict is introduced.”
  3. The writing is unclear. “Happy people like being happy and would do nice things to be happier and share the happy.”
  4. The style is overly wordy. “Happy people like being happy and would do nice things to be happier and share the happy with people who aren’t having happy.”
  5. There’s an invincible, perfect character with a throwaway flaw. “John was good at what he did, never made mistakes, but he had trouble at love.”
  6. Passive voice. “Jimmy WAS going to the store. He WAS going to his best friend’s birthday party later. He WAS thirteen already.”
  7. Telling instead of showing. “Alex was angry. He was mad that his sister had forgotten his birthday party and had gone out the night before with her friends instead of helping put up party decorations.”
  8. Unnecessary extra characters. “Over in the corner, all alone and bothering no one, the mailman read his copy of Better Homes & Gardens.”
  9. Gratuitous punctuation errors. “Donny was, happy. He–loved; going to DisneyLand.. Its the happiest of all place’s on Earth.”
  10. Subject-verb disagreements. “The cat or dog are causing a ruckus. Bob and Joan is angry about this.”
  11. Purple prose. “The grandiloquent vestiges of the clerical impersonator bore a genuine ecumenical pedigree.”
  12. The presence of informed attributes. “Christopher is a good writer.”
  13. Tonal disconnect. “The sky was bright and the sun was shining. Birds were chirping. The crisp morning air was sprinkled with the smell of dew. Dave resolved to fight–to die, for glorious honor in war. Wherever the little man was held down under the boot of evil, wherever children cry out for a hero, there would Dave be.”
  14. Shifting tense. “I was going to the park for lunch. A car is speeding down the road. I will be hit by the car.”
  15. Shifting perspective. “I rested on the park bench and enjoyed my lunch burrito. Back at the office, Dave feels angry about missing his lunch and wants to punch Bill when he gets back from eating his burrito at the park.”
  16. Author diatribes. “Alec frothed when he read the Facebook post. ‘Don’t you get it?’ he typed angrily. ‘Any idiot can see that the elected official is a moron, the truth speaks for itself!’”
  17. Adverb overkill. “Quietly, sneakily, Jim snuck into the room. Quickly, he sprinted into the shadows as the door closed behind him.”
  18. Strawmen. “‘Ah, but you see,’ Elliot started. ‘You’re incorrect about the current political landscape for the following citable and un-counterable reasons.”
  19. Cliches. “Spencer resolved to take it to the next level. Come hell or high water, by the end of the day, one would win, one would fall.”
  20. Overly-complicated plot. “Once we find the passkey, we’ll be able to get past the outer wall. But, we have to wait until the solstice blinds the optical readers and Bravo Team has bypassed the encryption at the Siberian outpost. If we’re able to then reroute the convoy, we’ll have a small window of opportunity to use crack the safe. Unfortunately, if the passcode is in ancient Sumerian, we may have to recruit my ex-girlfriend from college who I haven’t seen in sixteen years and lives on an oil rig.”
  21. It doesn’t end when it should. “I hugged my sister, and together we finally cried. Cried for our dog, who had been there for us, and for whom we could not be there anymore…The next day, I decided to go to the mall and clear my head.”
  22. Unresolved mysteries. “I always wondered what the deal was with the cuneiform written on the insides of the bank vault.”
  23. Overdone exposition. “We have to find the lost treasure of Abraham Lincoln, who you might remember was our nation’s sixteenth president, and liberator of the slaves from the South. He wore a stovetop pipe hat and was very tall. He was born in a log cabin and learned to read by candlelight…”
  24. Crappy, stilted dialogue. “‘Hello ex-wife!’”
  25. Unnecessary vulgarity. I’ll leave this one to your imagination.
Share|