If you’re reading this it’s a safe bet that you want to be a better writer. And if you want to be a great guitarist then you’d want to play the best songs, right? So why on earth should you read shitty writing, or watch poorly written films?

Because great writing can be a little too good. *

It still has its place, I’ve written out parts the Great Gatsby myself, and parts of screenplays too. I wouldn’t do that with a poorly written piece. But less well-woven pieces of art have a distinct advantage over better writing, for our purpose of learning.

You can see the cogs.

One of the incredible things about great writing is that you can’t see the cogs at all, not unless you already know where to look for them.  The conversations feel natural, the exposition is hidden somewhere you can barely see, you’re drawn into empathy with the characters before you even know what’s going on.

A good scene has at least twenty things going on underneath the surface, and without someone there to hold your hand and explain each one they’re all invisible. But not in bad writing.

In bad writing, by seeing the flaws, we see how not to do it. Personally, I think it’s immoral to hold any writer, successful or not, up in public as “bad”, regardless of what popular opinion says. As such all the examples here are my own made up for your viewing pleasure.

“I love you,” she said, stroking his arm.

“I hate you,” he replied, eyes blazing with anger.

So, when you read something like this, and you feel that disconnect in your gut that says oof, that ain’t working for me boss. It’s worth stopping and asking why. I wrote this to illustrate why subtext is important in dialogue, so let’s try and make it a little nicer.

“I love you,” she said, stroking his arm.

“I love you” he replied, eyes blazing with anger.

Alright, so that’s a little better, he’s saying something that implies the complete opposite to what he’s doing. So we learnt something, scenes work better when there’s a juxtaposition between what people say and what they do.

This is another part of my, unsurprising, advocation for critiqueing groups. Reading and critiqueing others is a great learning tool for yourself as a writer, as not only are you learning from your own mistakes, you’re learning from theirs as well.

So, next time you read a piece of writing and feel that disconnect. Stop reading for a second and work out why that moment or that line didn’t land for you, you’ll learn from their mistake without the pain of having to repeat it yourself.

Then your oof, that ain’t working for me boss turns from a moment of disappointment into a moment of intrigue, and gets you wondering what’s the lesson here?

Ask that time enough and you’re enjoying media that you love, whilst learning how to be a better writer. If that ain’t living the dream, I don’t know what is.

“Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.”

― Eleanor Roosevelt

*For ease of communication I arbitrarily talked about “bad” and “good” writing throughout this post. They don’t exist. There is simply more refined and less refined writing: if you could write what’s in your heart it’d be perfect on the page. It just takes a lot of years to get your grubby little fingers to type the words in the right order. But that’s a post for another time.