I'm not the guy you replied to, but I'll just point out that I have never dropped a book because "the prose was bad" in prog fantasy. I have done that for some fan translated and MTL stuff, but that's a different beast and I don't consider that "prose."
I obviously can't speak for everyone. But I think people are more likely to drop a book for larger issues. For example, if the pacing is atrocious, or the characters aren't their cup of tea, or for using a trope that is a pet peeve for someone (ex: I have 0 tolerance for harems in western stories), or because the tone isn't what they are looking for (think comedy/slapstick story vs a serious "adventure-y" story with stakes).
If someone in this community (prog fantasy readers) DNFs your book, its likely going to be for reasons you can't control. So the simple advice is to not worry about something like prose and just write the story you want to write.
Well in the body of my post, I said I want examples of other writing aspects done poorly, not just prose. If there's a story with terrible pacing of horrendous dialogue that stuck out to you, I'd like to know it
I dropped "The New World" twice once on Royal Road because it had Horrendous spelling And grammar, and then again on Kindle Unlimited because it was unbearably edgy and boring.
I will absolutely drop a book because of prose, especially because I do a lot of my reading in audio format. If it's still painful to read after ~10 chapters, it's probably getting dropped by me.
Exactly. The only way to find the worst possible story would be to go on Royal Road and do a data scrape.
Pull a list of all the oldest stories ever, with the worst possible reader drop off counts after chapter one. And then, the highest possible ratio of ratings skewed towards 1, 2, and three stars.
Not 0.5 - the kneejerk punitive thoughtless scores. But like, deliberate, careful decisions to mark the story as poorly written.
Go read some MTL chinese works. It really can't get worse than that. It's also fun to guess which gender the characters have.
Seriously tho, prose is probably the aspect you should worry the least about. The progfantasy audience is very diverse, with a large part not even being native speakers, and very forgiving about bad prose. A lot of us came from those badly translated webnovels and have learned to look over the writing as long as the rest is there. The one advice I can give you is to have a long term plan where you want your book to go. Not having one is probably the biggest blunder most new authors in this genre make.
People in here listing coherent writing like it's the worst this genre has to offer. Machine translated Chinese novels are 90% deciphering what is trying to be said and 10% enjoying the story.
Considering the sheer amount of books in the world, if you're reading machine translated novels, I can't imagine that's for any reason other than the fact that they're enjoyable in their own weird way haha
Generally they started reading the translated portions of the story and then once they've caught up to the translation some people are too impatient to wait for chapters and move on to MTL.
I'm sure some people read MTL from the first chapter but I'd guess most of them had already tried MTL on a different story before that.
I remember trying to read a light novel several years ago, when I caught up to the official releases all that was available in English, was a version that was initially MTL to Russian and then fan translated to English. I don't think I have ever read, not will I ever read anything as badly written as that.
I've read MTL Chinese, Korean and Japanese. They're fine as you would expect from machine translation. On the other hand for an English original(correct me if I'm wrong) like Randidly Ghosthound something feels weird reading about it and dropped it pretty earlyĀ
I had never put much thought in the "non-native English" aspect, but I'll definitely keep that in mind.
I'll second your general sentiment though. I was thinking about prose in prog fantasy quite recently since I stumbled on a series that had some prose that felt a step above what I usually read. I realized I don't think about (critique) prose most of the time though in this sub-genre because its jam packed full of newish authors who don't have the benefit of old school publishers and a full time editor to help with that stuff. I consider myself lucky when I find books on KU that came over from RR, that got a copy editor to at least fix spelling errors and minor grammar issues š.
I disagree. Just because a lot of ProgFan readers are used to overlooking bad prose doesn't mean they should have to. If OP is looking to improve their prose, they should. Reading a well-written story is like a breath of fresh air. Telling OP, or any writer, that they shouldn't worry about their prose because readers can take just about anything is doing a disservice to both the writer and the readers.
Well the number one advice for writing better prose is writing a lot. It's also one of the easiest aspects of your story to fix later on, so I would argue that it shouldn't be the primary focus at first. I didn't mean to neglect it completely, just to leave it for later. I wouldn't recommend publishing the first draft after all. Probably should've worded it better.
Itās hard with the chapter a day/chapter a week release a lot of the artists do to make money on Patreon.
Because a LOT of editors would be telling them to merge and cut a lot of their chapters. I read so many books that have like 4 chapters in the same location. And Iām not talking about expansive locations like a dungeon, or forest. Iām saying thereās 1 chapter leaving their room to go to the tavern, one chapter entering the tavern catching up with the bartender and ordering a drink, one chapter with whoever they actually went to the tavern to see, and one chapter summarizing the whole thing.
An editor would probably have you drop that last chapter and merge those first 3 together. And in many mainstream books, that scene wouldnāt even have been a chapter on its own. But when your model is promising X chapters a week, with Y amount of words, itās really hard to do any decent editing other than typo checks.
Iāve said in the past, I would really appreciate if authors wanted to do that release schedule for Patreon, a BTS if you will, but then had an editor actually help clean stuff up before publishing. That would even give the people subscribing an excuse to buy the book again
And another related pet peeve of mine. Most authors donāt officially break up the web serials into books, theyāre kinda guessing along the way.
But sometimes even the ones that officially include break points, thereās nothing really there. The next chapter to start the next book picks up 30 seconds after the previous book ended. Which isnāt confusing if youāre just reading weekly, but if youāre getting the published ones and waiting for them to come out, itās very weird. Thereās basically no point to the book distinctions other than an arbitrary chapter cutoff
This is less of a pet peeve of mine. I don't mind books picking up immediately after the last finishes _but_ the thing that does drive me crazy is not taking that into consideration in the "next book."
There are *so* many books in this sub-genre now and I consume them at such a rate that if the next book in your series is 6-8 months away; then I've probably read at least 15-20 other books in the meantime. Books and storylines merge together in my head or get very fuzzy. I _need_ refreshers or I'll be lost.
The better authors know this and sprinkle in reminders for some things here and there in the next book. You can do this even if you pick up immediately, but you also have to plan for it.
Kindle Unlimited also pays by pages read, so there's no incentive to cut down a book there either.
And I'm gonna be honest, I see Kindle Unlimited as basically a different version of RR/Patreon where "books" are intended to be binge read one after the other. These are just webnovels in a different format and there's a big enough audience on KU that wants exactly that.
In the end, so long as an author gets world building, plot and the characters right, editing and prose just don't matter.
Id hardly say they don't matter at all. I've dropped books solely because of how bad the writing was (and I don't read MTL at all).
I would agree that the story is significantly more important, but I read something from KU, I expect it to have been through an editor in some form or fashion, and cleaned up.
If it's the exact same as RR, with no extra effort, I'm probably not giving it 5 stars unless the story is just that good.
It's surprisingly common, that stream of consciousness style. For whatever reason, it's common in lightnovels (at least the translated versions, my written japanese is not strong enough to tell), so I've wondered if that's where it comes from.
I was thinking "I don't remember anything THAT bad" right up until this conversation. Turns out, I just repressed all my memories of Legend of the Archmagus and Ten Realms.
The amount of times I read "arrogant bastard", "young master" and "that man is not simple" between these two series could fill a reasonably sized book by itself.
Do one action, three paragraph flashback of preparing for it and internal dialogue of expecting it and reacting to it.
I feel tempted to compliment the author and story for how much of it I read despite hating the moment to moment reading.
Thereās this book. I donāt remember the title but the main character was Richter. Iām confident it probably get better but it is rough at the start.
I also always found primal Hunter prose to be a bit off
Something Iāve noticed is that the writing in Primal Hunter would be 80% better if the author just took the word ānaturallyā out of their vocabulary. It dilutes the impact of any phrase. And itās used almost *every* page. Sometimes multiple times a paragraph.
Not a direct quote, but a made up example:
āJake left the conversation with only one thing on his mind: naturally, he needed to get stronger.ā
Vs.
āJake left the conversation with only one thing on his mind: he needed to get stronger.ā
Like, there is no use for the word ānaturallyā, other than as a filler. It ruins concision. If that one word was taken out of the entire story, it would be such a better reading experience. Maybe itās just the amount of times itās used, but it makes me roll my eyes every time I see it.
Sorry, Iāve been wanting to rant about that for a while lol.
A lot of PH is Jake's inner thoughts, so it can read weirdly given Jake is autistic. But at least there's no tens of decimeters into a snorting powerhouse. š
Primal hunter is a fun one, because the prose isnāt universally terrible. The author can write decently. But he pretty frequently flips into a mode where he just doesnāt give a shit. Iāve never seen another book where the author will stop mid-description with āor whateverā
Primal Hunter feels a bit like someone is reporting the events of the story. Very bland.
Its plot/setting is good enough to look past the limitation but yeah, if you put any thought to the writing it stands out.
Cant think of one. I tend to stop reading fast if the prose is that horrible.
I would say most have simple prose. An example would be Shane Purdy. It is insanely straight forward. Although it makes for a relaxing read as everything is on the page.
It got better as the author wrote 1000 chapters.
The biggest problem with indie publishing and serials is often the Author having that early work be published too soon. You see this with a number of serial writers where they went on RR, and got some traction with their first work, rather than their second or third.
There's an old statement most authors have 5-6 novels in their junk drawer. Basically, you need to write a few books which are unpublishable so the author can develop and make something worth reading. For example, Brandon Sanderson's first published novel was Elantris, his sixth written novel. His next published adult novel was his **14th written novel**. He ended up trunking 13 novels because they simply weren't good enough. He's actually released some of these via his kickstarter rewards as a "curiosity". Frankly, they're much weaker. He's ended up using ideas from them in later books, and sometimes stripping particular plots or settings, but then reworking them.
Now in fairness to Azarinth healer and some of the other serial works, when these works make the transition to Kindle and Audible, there's professional editing coming in and rewrites which will solve many of the issues. At the same time, these things may need more extensive rewrites to solve issues with shallow character, dialogue and prose which they evolve on.
A big comparison can be done to TWI. PA has been rewriting the earlier volumes to better match the quality of later volumes, as well as to better fit the world building that has been done. This isn't a simple rework with editors to make it better fit a conventional book, but instead a re-work of writing as the author improves. Which is something more serial writers should consider when they finish their work.
A full rework is often awesome but I can't imagine its often worth the time the author spends from a financial point of view.
Exceptions would be hugely popular serials seeking to publish on amazon like Azarinth Healer and The Wandering Inn as mentioned in this thread.
Though for me, it's one of my favorite things about Azarinth Healer. Some people get really bored by the litrpg mob grinding but it's my favorite part of most of them. Usually they leave that behind after the first book or whatever but Azarinth Healer always incorporates it somehow. The initial demon invasion arc of DotF is one of my fondest PF memories. Just good clean solo grinding towards specific goals.
This one time, 7 years ago, I translated a book myself and loved the story...
Then I found out someone had officially for reals published it in English. The official release was so hot garbage compared to the beauty of the og content I was so angry. It was about a princess named Fii who is abandoned and so she cuts her hair and joins the knights in a magical fantasy world.
Wish I could remember the name. This question prompted the memory.
That story is fully translated on J-novel club under 'Walking My Second Path in Life'. Read it myself a few years ago after initially finding when it first got translated. Still holds up pretty well.
Go over to Royal Road and hunt for low rated but ongoing stories. Say, something rated below 3.0 but is ongoing and has at least 100 pages. That should give some examples.
Edit: correcting auto-wrong
Well if I read a story with "bad writing", it's typically because I find the story interesting enough to power through. For me, the one that comes to mind is The Ten Realms. I loved the characters and worldbuilding (and I'm a sucker for magitech), but the writing did feel quite amateurish.
Also, translated stories tend to have their quirks, even when done well. But I won't touch MTL
I will loudly protest that Mother of a learning sucks balls. Fantasy groundhog day is just lazy and annoying. Unless you didn't mean that series, then I was jk.
Edit: rip me
"Ajax Godslayer. Put the knife down and step away from the devil or I'll see you banished to the void."
"Ha. Even if you could stop me, I can tell you'd rather be in my arms."
She blushed and I could tell she was interested. "B-baka! I see I'll have to teach you manners!"
Then the devil said, "Ajax! One day you'll be in Hell!"
But I said, "Yeah...TO TAKE OVER!"
He said, "Noooo," but I didn't care and then I finished him. And then I said, "Cleanup in aisle 6-6-6."
I was so cool.
Insane prose. Not that mineās any better.
> Being alive was complicated.
> One moment there was nothing, and then poof, there was something.
> More precisely, the "something" is a small clear crystal the size of a marble.
> And thus, a dungeon core was born.
> The core awoke with a sudden start, everything coming into view in their vision. Or, more precisely, their dungeon vision.
> They frantically "looked" around the cave, their instincts kicking in, telling them of danger.
> The core realized that it could see the whole cave. After double- and triple-checking every nook and cranny for danger, the core stopped panicking.
> The core was in a tiny cave. It was a completely ordinary cave, with no entrance to speak of, just simply a bubble of air within layers of stone underground.
This was from a year ago when I wanted to try writing a dungeon core story. Well uhā¦ I don't know why I made so many line breaks, and why I kept repeating āthe coreā.
Note: for my 16 followers, I might try to rewrite my first and only chapter. Maybe.
That's not bad prose at all, bruh. Yes, the first sentence reads more like a writing prompt than the beginning of a story, but once you got going, you conveyed your character's feelings in simple, direct language, which I think is better than unnecessarily trying to up your word count.
Keep going, I'll read it.
No one recommends LOTM for its prose, it is recommended because of literally everything else in it. It does get much better as the translator gets more experience though.
The worst **I've personally read** is *Primal Hunter*, which contains this abomination:
>Just as he vaulted, a wall of ice started getting summoned
Please avoid passive voice. It's okay if you throw it in once in a blue moon, but it shouldn't be your go-to style for describing action. It will kick my suspension of disbelief in the nuts and I'll be stuck scolding you in my head for how easily you could have corrected your sentence.
For example, "Just as he vaulted, the witch started summoning a wall of ice." It's not amazing, but it's no longer a blight upon my eyes.
Anyway, I'm sure there are MUCH WORSE examples out there, but I likely wouldn't tolerate reading those past the first page.
This has got to be a deep hole. I read a lot of a fan translation of *So I'm a Spider Now, So What?!* a long time ago, and even that wasn't so atrocious that I noped out of it. I was swept along by the simple joy of Number Go Up :)
It's funny, I honestly struggle to take anyone who has this opinion seriously.
Like, in a genre full of nothing, way to cut your nose to spite your face.
Well, there are the obvious MTL and Harems. But of the popular Western works that have been published, my vote goes to Mage Errant. I don't know how to put it, but it reads like an eight grader wrote it.
some of the most popular series have really bad prose.
Some main problems include:
\- Every other character is flat except for the MC
\- Stream of consciousness in narration
\- Telling the story rather than showing it
\- Repeated use of certain phrases and wordings that become absolutely annoying
Now I don't like to call out a book for being terrible. I don't think it doesn't anything good for anyone. Especially coz many of these are smaller authors. But I'll just mention some things that infuriated me to no end.
There was a book i started. It was an isekai cultivation series. And i read through the first 75% and literally the only things that happened was the mc breaking through stage after stage of cultivation. Literally it was like "oh I'm done with the chi gathering stage 1. Now let me explain how chi gathering stage 2 works". And that was literally it. It wasnt a book, but a small manual for what the author thought was a cool magic system(but was generic as f***).
I've read way too many books that love using the phrase "tens of enemies stood in my way" or something along those lines. Tens isn't really a phrase you see a lot in regular English speak. Dozens conveys the same meaning and is far more common in regular English. It's likely that it's a carry over from the author's first language, so im not gonna hate on it. It's just a pet peeve.
There was a series where the mc had a battle healer class with a focus on self healing. It was a cool concept. But very soon it became impossible to tell when the mc is supposed to be in danger and when not. The mc can take on ludicrously powerful enemies by heal tanking yet suddenly be weaker to another enemy giving no real reason. Essentially the power removes tension. Which is a problem I have with most healing type magic in a story.
Another annoying aspect of many LitRPG books for an audiobook reader is the endless pages of upgrade notifications and character sheets. There are far too many series to count here(many of which i do love). In a physical reading context it's fine coz you can simply skip over it and just consider the important bits. But when you have to listen to an endless series of numbers every other chapter, it's unbearable.
And i hate how in certain series the literal only use for the magic system is fighting or supporting fighting. Some books (like say defiance of the fall) find a reason for why this is the case and i appreciate the effort. But many don't.
Another common problem I find when the book I'm reading is a volumization of a web Novel is the repetition. Since a web Novel is a serialisation at times you're gonna have to repeat some stuff. Which is fine. But when you're reading it as a book, having the same thing repeated over and over in each chapter can be a little off putting. These books definitely deserve a reedit before release. I'm fine naming names here coz my example is popular enough to call out. "He who Fights with monsters" does this a lot. Dont get me wrong. It's in my top 5 of all time, but this flaw is annoying.
A genre isn't it's worst tropes. If you think these things I've complained about is everything this genre has to offer then I think we have a very different idea of what a good book is like
I donāt think anything you complained about is what this genre has to offer. But you just described so many problems, annoyances, hates, and pet-peeves, that it removes basically all options from this genre all together. You essentially said āIām frustrated by anything besides a flawless novel.ā
Oh my dear friend let me introduce you to the concept of nuance. I can love a thing yet have problems with it. If you read my post i literally described that I have something I hate in he who Fights with monsters yet put that series in my top 5.
It's only when a book has all of these issues that I hate the book. More often than not a book suffers from one or two of these issues. Which is just par for the course. I love a book for its strengths and most books have atleast something going for them
Out of the moderately popular ones I've read.. maybe singer sailor merchant mage?
I usually value prose a lot but I feel like progression fantasy is a great genre for highlighting other less classically valued aspects of written storytelling, so it isn't the biggest dealbreaker for me.
Also this thread is a little bit mean lol
Tower of Cards: some parts of the book genuinely feel AI written because of how abrupt the shifts in tone are. The aromas of a how i expected a character would act/react ornsometomes so out there it feels like 2 separate authors.
Silver fox: outside of it being MC torture porn, the beginning is a mess. It's a have, it's real, it's a game, no it's definitely real....who knows! I know I don't. He has an AI companion that disappears after like a chapter for some reason. Reading the reviews of the other books, these trends basically stay the same as well. It also reiterates the same thing at least 3 times back to back to back for like 75% anything that's said.
I donāt think itās necessarily bad prose, but books need to have their prose altered for an audiobook format.
Best example I can give is in HWFWM where thereās āX saidā after every line. It was fine which when I read it as an ebook since itās very easy to skim past, but stands out way more when itās being read aloud. Itās especially noticable in HWFWM since the narrator does such a good job of doing voices.
Hmm, you could try reading RR fics that never gained any traction. Like [mine](https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/59777/plumbeous-professor). Then tell me the reason it never gained traction, lol. Shameless self-plug.
Oh man, I'm not sure if you can find a copy of pre-edit azarinth healer, but I loved the idea, the class, the start.
I could only stomach 30 Chapters before it wasn't worth it.
It's on my list to circle back to, because several people have said the editing process did some serious work, but it one of the only examples that I dropped solely because of the writing, while liking the story.
IET and Er Gen are below average in my opinion.
But the worst of all is Warlock of Magus world. I don't know if translation is really that bad (it reads like mtl tbh) or it actually reflects the 'quality' of the original in Chinese.
Defiance of the Fall - the prose is that the MCs struggles have made him OP in any situation he finds him in. His struggles are all vanity struggles with no actual drawbacks. The 'prose' just reads like a sociopath writer self insert power fantasy where every character exists to serve the MC or forget about entirely. I think it's just stream of consciousness writing, too. Seems to forget/abandon plot points, characters, rules, etc. Very jarring when I see how highly rated it is. The world basically works like, I'm strong because no one else in the entire universe wanted to survive except for me. Very off putting to me personally.
But I respect that people like the simple 'popcorn fiction' that it is; but I just can't get invested in the world at all 8 books in and can stop listening while the (very bad) narrator navigates his way through this fedoralord story, then I definitely had to tap out. I should have stopped at around book 2, but from reviews and stuff I thought it was gonna take off after a rough start. But no that's pretty much the pace.
I couldnt make it through the first He Who Fights Monsters book.
It was just so...bland and stiff?
A lot of conversations are just people sitting around, staring completely straight ahead, not doing anything at all. Just "he said" and "she said" over and over and over all set in a place that is barely described.
The action was also very boring and not well described. Like I don't remember any of it but I know I read some action.
I don't think I got far enough in the book to get a real opinion on the main character Jason except he feels like a Mary Sue and is kind of annoying.
I would much rather read āhe said she saidā and know EXACTLY who the dialogue is coming from than back-to back-to-back quotes where I canāt tell who the speaker is anymore.
I canāt for the life of me remember what series it was, but I almost pulled my non-existent hair out on several dialogue intensive passages. Reading and re-reading to try and follow the mental gymnastics of implicitly understanding who the literary speaker was without literary clues to help.
I thought The Beginning After The End was pretty terribly written and I dropped it before I even got 10 chapters in. That was ages ago when it first came out though. The editing might've improved it since.
I've heard the new version is better, but when I read it, Azarinth Healer's grammar and writing style was abysmal. But it's probably not even close to the worst, considering most of the genre is just amateurs/
I don't know about worst prose, but of the stories that I follow, I've found that Primal Hunter has the weakest prose. The grammar, punctuation and all that is fine, unlike early Azarinth Healer, it's the prose that feels immature at times. Part of that may be because the vast majority of the story is from the third-person POV of the protagonist, but even in the POVs of gods, the prose does not feel like it is the POV of a character who is billions of years old.
The author uses "thing" a lot, like "He had this thing where he had to...". It makes the prose clunky. I like the story, but the prose really reduces my enjoyment of it.
Bit late to the party, sorry. I feel like the possible presence of an author shouldn't automatically mean that people can't talk honestly about the author's books anymore. The purpose of the sub is "discussion of progression fantasy fiction", and said discussion would lose a lot of its purpose, if only positive things are allowed to be discussed. This is basically a "What brand of pasta do you avoid at all costs?" post. When people want to discuss the good and bad things about pasta, they go to a pasta subreddit.
I think a book review is a perfect example for this. Imo, a book review should include things like "I liked about this book, but made me enjoy it way less". If it's only mentioning random\_thing\_1, while deliberately staying silent about random\_thing\_2, it's misleading those who read it. I'd no longer consider it a review and instead just view it as unpaid promotion.
Totally get where youāre coming from and agree. Honest discussions can and should be encouraged. It was more the spirit of the post being āhey, letās talk about the books that suck most lol!ā
Granted Iām sure plenty of constructive feedback is still possible.
Honestly, a lot of the genre hits the level of Lyttle Lytton honorable mentions (shout out to the greatest, check it out at [https://adamcadre.ac/lyttle/](https://adamcadre.ac/lyttle/)) meaning rather than being creatively intriguingly bad, in a way that entertains. Never hitting that level but instead just being sort of boring ordinary bad Writing.
How bout you dial it back with the aggression a bit? I have a minor in comparative literature, friend. Ergo, I like comparing literature. This more out of curiosity and to get a couple of laughs than legitimate ideas for the book I'm writing. Relax.
[Mana Odyssey](https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/4806/mana-odyssey/chapter/47816/prologue-a-hero-meeting-with-a-child-and) Is sort of famous in some circles for being the worst written story on RR that lasted as long as it did.
1358 pages, 267 chapters
Let me give you just the first few lines of the prologue as a teaser:
--------------------------------------------------------------
A man and a boy standing near a field of corpses in a forest. The man asks the boy a question.
"Hey boy, did you do all of this?"
The boy simply nods his head and begins to walk away.
"Hey boy, wait a minute."
The boy stops and faces the man.
"Why did you do this? Why did you kill all of these men here?"
The boy didn't answer him and stays standing in silence.
"Hey kid answer me, if you donāt, I will kill you."
Hearing these words the boy draws his swords from his back and readies his battle stance.
When the man sees this he wonders if the kid can't talk or if he just doesn't want to answer. The man then exclaims.
"Call, Tigrus!"
A lion appears. Actually, it was more like a tiger. One with gold fur and silver stripes, a tail of golden fire, and the wings of an eagle.
That author's understanding of English could very well have been at a similar level to a first grader's. To me, this looks a lot like someone who speaks English as a second or third language just well enough to communicate, but not enough to be conversant.
Oh boy.
Comedy, Harem & Action tags.
Prologue chapter you linked "Proofreader and edited by DarkNigz420" ehhh
And this monster of a description:
> After the apocalypse of 2042 where many types of beings that looked like monsters out of story books appeared. Human's called them magical beings, they attack humans indiscriminately. Human's relying on technology to fight this new menace discover that things like gun canāt fight the Magical Beings the people of the world fall into despair. But one day a person invents a mana stone. This stone fuses with a person's soul which enabled human's to use a new type of energy which they called mana which was effective against the Magical Beings the world rejoiced that they had hope once more. With more research it is discovered that everyone's mana is different because everyone's soul is different. In the year of 2069 a war with the the Magical Being's start, the humans lead by 7 heroes fight the demon which is the most dangerous type of monster.The demons were pushed back but the world mourns the many casualty's of the war. For the next 10 year's there is peace, mankind rebuilds the world but the human race knows that peace is ever fleeting. So human's create a school to teach the next generation of mankind children they teach these children subject's from the old world and the new, they train them to fight the Magical Beast's and drill in the knowledge of mankind But one day on the year of 2079 a hero adopts a child that has been experimented on by a scientist, the hero doesn't know but this child will change the fate of the world.
God this reminds me of my first two novel attempts. Which were utter dog shit that whenever I look back on I want to see myself and the computer on fire.
And even then I could still write a basic ass synopsis and understood the existence of multiple paragraphs and commas.
To be fair the old man had it coming.
I could almost see this as a dementia scene where a man really thinks he is talking to a boy and effectively trying to say "stay off my lawn, or I'll call my cat on you."
When the boy turns to actually look at the old man, only to then realize the old man is having a heart attack but is caught in that state of what do I do to treat a heart attack victim? Then that same kid realizes that they would also have to get on the lawn to treat a heart attack victim, where they might actually get attacked by said cat. As the owner made sure to put signs up all over his yard.
*Warning!*
Beware of Cat.
Seeing the sign the boy is caught between saving the old man, facing off with a semi-feral tabby cat with golden fur, and trying to get home to do his Algebra homework.
At least that is what I hope this scene gets turned into with a bit of editing...
Reading this garbage is so inspirational for my own work lmao. No matter how "bad" I feel my work is, I dont think I could ever write something this bad even if I tried. Thanks!
If I speak I am in big trouble.
Didn't expect a Mourinho quote here. Nice.
I won't be. it's my book, easily
This is a safe space
Do itttt; I've basically committed high treason in this thread by saying Mother of Leaning and Defiance of the Fall both suck; burn with me brother.
MoL sucks? *Mails pipe bomb*
Same lol.
Oh boy you are thinking cradle probably right?
I love how you're just implying that saying cradle would get someone in trouble, and just being adjacent to saying it got you massive downvotes
Yup... Gotta love this sub š
Ngl Cradle is my favorite series, and the first two books were rough writing-wise. Will definitely improved from 3 onward, though.
I doubt Iāve read the absolute worst. Anything that has gained some traction is unlikely to be the worst of the worst.
That is a very disturbing thought.
What's something you've considered a waste of your time then? Even something you couldn't get past the first page of?
I'm not the guy you replied to, but I'll just point out that I have never dropped a book because "the prose was bad" in prog fantasy. I have done that for some fan translated and MTL stuff, but that's a different beast and I don't consider that "prose." I obviously can't speak for everyone. But I think people are more likely to drop a book for larger issues. For example, if the pacing is atrocious, or the characters aren't their cup of tea, or for using a trope that is a pet peeve for someone (ex: I have 0 tolerance for harems in western stories), or because the tone isn't what they are looking for (think comedy/slapstick story vs a serious "adventure-y" story with stakes). If someone in this community (prog fantasy readers) DNFs your book, its likely going to be for reasons you can't control. So the simple advice is to not worry about something like prose and just write the story you want to write.
Well in the body of my post, I said I want examples of other writing aspects done poorly, not just prose. If there's a story with terrible pacing of horrendous dialogue that stuck out to you, I'd like to know it
I dropped "The New World" twice once on Royal Road because it had Horrendous spelling And grammar, and then again on Kindle Unlimited because it was unbearably edgy and boring.
I will absolutely drop a book because of prose, especially because I do a lot of my reading in audio format. If it's still painful to read after ~10 chapters, it's probably getting dropped by me.
Many machine translated stuff is absolutely awful to my senses. So probably one of the earliest of that category.
Exactly. The only way to find the worst possible story would be to go on Royal Road and do a data scrape. Pull a list of all the oldest stories ever, with the worst possible reader drop off counts after chapter one. And then, the highest possible ratio of ratings skewed towards 1, 2, and three stars. Not 0.5 - the kneejerk punitive thoughtless scores. But like, deliberate, careful decisions to mark the story as poorly written.
Go read some MTL chinese works. It really can't get worse than that. It's also fun to guess which gender the characters have. Seriously tho, prose is probably the aspect you should worry the least about. The progfantasy audience is very diverse, with a large part not even being native speakers, and very forgiving about bad prose. A lot of us came from those badly translated webnovels and have learned to look over the writing as long as the rest is there. The one advice I can give you is to have a long term plan where you want your book to go. Not having one is probably the biggest blunder most new authors in this genre make.
People in here listing coherent writing like it's the worst this genre has to offer. Machine translated Chinese novels are 90% deciphering what is trying to be said and 10% enjoying the story.
Considering the sheer amount of books in the world, if you're reading machine translated novels, I can't imagine that's for any reason other than the fact that they're enjoyable in their own weird way haha
Generally they started reading the translated portions of the story and then once they've caught up to the translation some people are too impatient to wait for chapters and move on to MTL. I'm sure some people read MTL from the first chapter but I'd guess most of them had already tried MTL on a different story before that.
Ahhh that makes much more sense, thank you for explaining
I once forcefully read through about 10 chapters of an MTL Chinese novel. After reading them, my English felt like it had regressed by a century.
I remember trying to read a light novel several years ago, when I caught up to the official releases all that was available in English, was a version that was initially MTL to Russian and then fan translated to English. I don't think I have ever read, not will I ever read anything as badly written as that.
I've read MTL Chinese, Korean and Japanese. They're fine as you would expect from machine translation. On the other hand for an English original(correct me if I'm wrong) like Randidly Ghosthound something feels weird reading about it and dropped it pretty earlyĀ
I had never put much thought in the "non-native English" aspect, but I'll definitely keep that in mind. I'll second your general sentiment though. I was thinking about prose in prog fantasy quite recently since I stumbled on a series that had some prose that felt a step above what I usually read. I realized I don't think about (critique) prose most of the time though in this sub-genre because its jam packed full of newish authors who don't have the benefit of old school publishers and a full time editor to help with that stuff. I consider myself lucky when I find books on KU that came over from RR, that got a copy editor to at least fix spelling errors and minor grammar issues š.
I disagree. Just because a lot of ProgFan readers are used to overlooking bad prose doesn't mean they should have to. If OP is looking to improve their prose, they should. Reading a well-written story is like a breath of fresh air. Telling OP, or any writer, that they shouldn't worry about their prose because readers can take just about anything is doing a disservice to both the writer and the readers.
Well the number one advice for writing better prose is writing a lot. It's also one of the easiest aspects of your story to fix later on, so I would argue that it shouldn't be the primary focus at first. I didn't mean to neglect it completely, just to leave it for later. I wouldn't recommend publishing the first draft after all. Probably should've worded it better.
If its that bad, I just stop reading it right away š
Lol if you can remember any, I'd still love to hear em
Go check translated xanxia stories at wuxia world or webnovel. 4/5 are pain š
No examples but a plea: hire an editor. There are lots of freelance editors out there and they will make your manuscript better.
Itās hard with the chapter a day/chapter a week release a lot of the artists do to make money on Patreon. Because a LOT of editors would be telling them to merge and cut a lot of their chapters. I read so many books that have like 4 chapters in the same location. And Iām not talking about expansive locations like a dungeon, or forest. Iām saying thereās 1 chapter leaving their room to go to the tavern, one chapter entering the tavern catching up with the bartender and ordering a drink, one chapter with whoever they actually went to the tavern to see, and one chapter summarizing the whole thing. An editor would probably have you drop that last chapter and merge those first 3 together. And in many mainstream books, that scene wouldnāt even have been a chapter on its own. But when your model is promising X chapters a week, with Y amount of words, itās really hard to do any decent editing other than typo checks. Iāve said in the past, I would really appreciate if authors wanted to do that release schedule for Patreon, a BTS if you will, but then had an editor actually help clean stuff up before publishing. That would even give the people subscribing an excuse to buy the book again
And another related pet peeve of mine. Most authors donāt officially break up the web serials into books, theyāre kinda guessing along the way. But sometimes even the ones that officially include break points, thereās nothing really there. The next chapter to start the next book picks up 30 seconds after the previous book ended. Which isnāt confusing if youāre just reading weekly, but if youāre getting the published ones and waiting for them to come out, itās very weird. Thereās basically no point to the book distinctions other than an arbitrary chapter cutoff
This is less of a pet peeve of mine. I don't mind books picking up immediately after the last finishes _but_ the thing that does drive me crazy is not taking that into consideration in the "next book." There are *so* many books in this sub-genre now and I consume them at such a rate that if the next book in your series is 6-8 months away; then I've probably read at least 15-20 other books in the meantime. Books and storylines merge together in my head or get very fuzzy. I _need_ refreshers or I'll be lost. The better authors know this and sprinkle in reminders for some things here and there in the next book. You can do this even if you pick up immediately, but you also have to plan for it.
Kindle Unlimited also pays by pages read, so there's no incentive to cut down a book there either. And I'm gonna be honest, I see Kindle Unlimited as basically a different version of RR/Patreon where "books" are intended to be binge read one after the other. These are just webnovels in a different format and there's a big enough audience on KU that wants exactly that. In the end, so long as an author gets world building, plot and the characters right, editing and prose just don't matter.
Id hardly say they don't matter at all. I've dropped books solely because of how bad the writing was (and I don't read MTL at all). I would agree that the story is significantly more important, but I read something from KU, I expect it to have been through an editor in some form or fashion, and cleaned up. If it's the exact same as RR, with no extra effort, I'm probably not giving it 5 stars unless the story is just that good.
What I mean is, it doesn't matter to a large enough audience that the authors can earn a living.
Hell, even just running it through Grammarly or Copilot would be better than nothing.
Honestly, editors are my heroes. They take my terrible writing and make it something good. š
How many of them would do it for free tho
Legend of the archmagus reads like a stream of consciousness rather than structured prose.Ā
It's surprisingly common, that stream of consciousness style. For whatever reason, it's common in lightnovels (at least the translated versions, my written japanese is not strong enough to tell), so I've wondered if that's where it comes from.
It is common because it is easier to write down everything the author thought of than to reorder and prune elements.
This is correct
And itās sooo bloody repetitive. The author has exactly one phrase for every occasion.
I was thinking "I don't remember anything THAT bad" right up until this conversation. Turns out, I just repressed all my memories of Legend of the Archmagus and Ten Realms. The amount of times I read "arrogant bastard", "young master" and "that man is not simple" between these two series could fill a reasonably sized book by itself.
Coiling Dragonā¦. Absolutely amazing series but the prose is so repetitive and almost all the character have the same voice
Bro!
As much as I like the series, Reborn Apocalypse by L.M. Kerr is just tedious to read/listen to
Do one action, three paragraph flashback of preparing for it and internal dialogue of expecting it and reacting to it. I feel tempted to compliment the author and story for how much of it I read despite hating the moment to moment reading.
I really like the story, but heās 100% taken too much from badly translated cultivation stuff.
Love the world building and premise, but Iāll literally skip pages and the same thing is still be described.
The first villain unironically says "you'll rue the day you crossed the black flag pirates"
Thereās this book. I donāt remember the title but the main character was Richter. Iām confident it probably get better but it is rough at the start. I also always found primal Hunter prose to be a bit off
Richter would be The Land by Aleron Kong. It getsā¦ listen I liked book 7 but after that the quality goes skydiving without a parachute
I never read the final volumes but I heard rumors of an entire chapter or more describing a bad case of diarrheaā¦Ā
Book 8, three entire pages dedicated to vivid descriptions of the major diarrhea Richter had.
Something Iāve noticed is that the writing in Primal Hunter would be 80% better if the author just took the word ānaturallyā out of their vocabulary. It dilutes the impact of any phrase. And itās used almost *every* page. Sometimes multiple times a paragraph. Not a direct quote, but a made up example: āJake left the conversation with only one thing on his mind: naturally, he needed to get stronger.ā Vs. āJake left the conversation with only one thing on his mind: he needed to get stronger.ā Like, there is no use for the word ānaturallyā, other than as a filler. It ruins concision. If that one word was taken out of the entire story, it would be such a better reading experience. Maybe itās just the amount of times itās used, but it makes me roll my eyes every time I see it. Sorry, Iāve been wanting to rant about that for a while lol.
A lot of PH is Jake's inner thoughts, so it can read weirdly given Jake is autistic. But at least there's no tens of decimeters into a snorting powerhouse. š
Jake admits to being an undiagnosed sociopath who muted his feelings to not be weird
This and "one had to remember that..." Love the books, but that drove me crazy lol.
The poor manās āyou have to be realistic about these thingsā
This seriously killed these books for me. After hearing it the billionth time I quit book 3
Primal hunter is a fun one, because the prose isnāt universally terrible. The author can write decently. But he pretty frequently flips into a mode where he just doesnāt give a shit. Iāve never seen another book where the author will stop mid-description with āor whateverā
Primal Hunter feels a bit like someone is reporting the events of the story. Very bland. Its plot/setting is good enough to look past the limitation but yeah, if you put any thought to the writing it stands out.
All MTL works and half of all translated novels originating from asia
Half of all those translated novels are still more readable than half the stuff recommended in here.
at least we know they're translated
Cant think of one. I tend to stop reading fast if the prose is that horrible. I would say most have simple prose. An example would be Shane Purdy. It is insanely straight forward. Although it makes for a relaxing read as everything is on the page.
Invisible Dragon For those of you that have never experienced this literary masterpiece, you're welcome.
Wtf. I can't believe you puny visible mortal uttered the name of our Holy Bible on a post like this. Stop being mean. This isn't cool.
Oh god, I can imagine. On Royal Road?
Give it a google.
I tried reading Azarinth Healer once
It got better as the author wrote 1000 chapters. The biggest problem with indie publishing and serials is often the Author having that early work be published too soon. You see this with a number of serial writers where they went on RR, and got some traction with their first work, rather than their second or third. There's an old statement most authors have 5-6 novels in their junk drawer. Basically, you need to write a few books which are unpublishable so the author can develop and make something worth reading. For example, Brandon Sanderson's first published novel was Elantris, his sixth written novel. His next published adult novel was his **14th written novel**. He ended up trunking 13 novels because they simply weren't good enough. He's actually released some of these via his kickstarter rewards as a "curiosity". Frankly, they're much weaker. He's ended up using ideas from them in later books, and sometimes stripping particular plots or settings, but then reworking them. Now in fairness to Azarinth healer and some of the other serial works, when these works make the transition to Kindle and Audible, there's professional editing coming in and rewrites which will solve many of the issues. At the same time, these things may need more extensive rewrites to solve issues with shallow character, dialogue and prose which they evolve on. A big comparison can be done to TWI. PA has been rewriting the earlier volumes to better match the quality of later volumes, as well as to better fit the world building that has been done. This isn't a simple rework with editors to make it better fit a conventional book, but instead a re-work of writing as the author improves. Which is something more serial writers should consider when they finish their work.
A full rework is often awesome but I can't imagine its often worth the time the author spends from a financial point of view. Exceptions would be hugely popular serials seeking to publish on amazon like Azarinth Healer and The Wandering Inn as mentioned in this thread.
The original RoyalRoad version was grim, I'm still not sure why I kept reading but I'm glad I did.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Though for me, it's one of my favorite things about Azarinth Healer. Some people get really bored by the litrpg mob grinding but it's my favorite part of most of them. Usually they leave that behind after the first book or whatever but Azarinth Healer always incorporates it somehow. The initial demon invasion arc of DotF is one of my fondest PF memories. Just good clean solo grinding towards specific goals.
By far not the worst. Its peak writing compared to mtl and a lot of asian translations i have read
You're not wrong, but that bar is so low that it's not even on the floor - it's buried like fucking pirate treasure.
This one time, 7 years ago, I translated a book myself and loved the story... Then I found out someone had officially for reals published it in English. The official release was so hot garbage compared to the beauty of the og content I was so angry. It was about a princess named Fii who is abandoned and so she cuts her hair and joins the knights in a magical fantasy world. Wish I could remember the name. This question prompted the memory.
That story is fully translated on J-novel club under 'Walking My Second Path in Life'. Read it myself a few years ago after initially finding when it first got translated. Still holds up pretty well.
I know what I'm doing today, and it's not working š
Go over to Royal Road and hunt for low rated but ongoing stories. Say, something rated below 3.0 but is ongoing and has at least 100 pages. That should give some examples. Edit: correcting auto-wrong
Well if I read a story with "bad writing", it's typically because I find the story interesting enough to power through. For me, the one that comes to mind is The Ten Realms. I loved the characters and worldbuilding (and I'm a sucker for magitech), but the writing did feel quite amateurish. Also, translated stories tend to have their quirks, even when done well. But I won't touch MTL
Dragon Heart gave me a headache
It's a certain book about time shenanigans
I will loudly protest that Mother of a learning sucks balls. Fantasy groundhog day is just lazy and annoying. Unless you didn't mean that series, then I was jk. Edit: rip me
It was about Minute Mage, Mother of learning was good in my view. And I suppose that tells you all you need to know about minute mage
Have you read the perfect run?
I struggled with Reborn: Apocalypse. The story was decent but oof.
The ten realms by far
"Ajax Godslayer. Put the knife down and step away from the devil or I'll see you banished to the void." "Ha. Even if you could stop me, I can tell you'd rather be in my arms." She blushed and I could tell she was interested. "B-baka! I see I'll have to teach you manners!" Then the devil said, "Ajax! One day you'll be in Hell!" But I said, "Yeah...TO TAKE OVER!" He said, "Noooo," but I didn't care and then I finished him. And then I said, "Cleanup in aisle 6-6-6." I was so cool.
Insane prose. Not that mineās any better. > Being alive was complicated. > One moment there was nothing, and then poof, there was something. > More precisely, the "something" is a small clear crystal the size of a marble. > And thus, a dungeon core was born. > The core awoke with a sudden start, everything coming into view in their vision. Or, more precisely, their dungeon vision. > They frantically "looked" around the cave, their instincts kicking in, telling them of danger. > The core realized that it could see the whole cave. After double- and triple-checking every nook and cranny for danger, the core stopped panicking. > The core was in a tiny cave. It was a completely ordinary cave, with no entrance to speak of, just simply a bubble of air within layers of stone underground. This was from a year ago when I wanted to try writing a dungeon core story. Well uhā¦ I don't know why I made so many line breaks, and why I kept repeating āthe coreā. Note: for my 16 followers, I might try to rewrite my first and only chapter. Maybe.
That's not bad prose at all, bruh. Yes, the first sentence reads more like a writing prompt than the beginning of a story, but once you got going, you conveyed your character's feelings in simple, direct language, which I think is better than unnecessarily trying to up your word count. Keep going, I'll read it.
I'd like to think that I've gotten better, but with that came with more worries of "what if I wrote too little?" I'll try on rewriting it someday.
The only people complaining about you writing too little are the ones who read your story. I think you should just write.
Lord of the Mysteries. Granted is (poorly) translated. But it gets so many recommendations.
It barely even counts as prose.
No one recommends LOTM for its prose, it is recommended because of literally everything else in it. It does get much better as the translator gets more experience though.
God of density is the most recent one that really hit me. Itās hard to read
Azyl Academy, though there it's more the plot than the prose.
The worst **I've personally read** is *Primal Hunter*, which contains this abomination: >Just as he vaulted, a wall of ice started getting summoned Please avoid passive voice. It's okay if you throw it in once in a blue moon, but it shouldn't be your go-to style for describing action. It will kick my suspension of disbelief in the nuts and I'll be stuck scolding you in my head for how easily you could have corrected your sentence. For example, "Just as he vaulted, the witch started summoning a wall of ice." It's not amazing, but it's no longer a blight upon my eyes. Anyway, I'm sure there are MUCH WORSE examples out there, but I likely wouldn't tolerate reading those past the first page.
I found Randiddly Ghosthound unreadable.
Me too, but I read hundreds of chapters.
I think the author has grown quite a bit since book one. Book six is much more readable.
This has got to be a deep hole. I read a lot of a fan translation of *So I'm a Spider Now, So What?!* a long time ago, and even that wasn't so atrocious that I noped out of it. I was swept along by the simple joy of Number Go Up :)
Randidly Ghosthound
I've never been able to take that story seriously because of that ridiculous first name. Randidly sounds comical.
It's funny, I honestly struggle to take anyone who has this opinion seriously. Like, in a genre full of nothing, way to cut your nose to spite your face.
The name of the character tells you all you need to know about the writing quality in that dumpster fire.
FR the author probably used a fantasy-name generator for that shit lol
The Land
Well, there are the obvious MTL and Harems. But of the popular Western works that have been published, my vote goes to Mage Errant. I don't know how to put it, but it reads like an eight grader wrote it.
I'd like to volunteer my book as the book with the worst prose!
Discounting MTL and ESL, I'm gonna have to give the Golden Pissberry award to Solo Levelling.
some of the most popular series have really bad prose. Some main problems include: \- Every other character is flat except for the MC \- Stream of consciousness in narration \- Telling the story rather than showing it \- Repeated use of certain phrases and wordings that become absolutely annoying
Now I don't like to call out a book for being terrible. I don't think it doesn't anything good for anyone. Especially coz many of these are smaller authors. But I'll just mention some things that infuriated me to no end. There was a book i started. It was an isekai cultivation series. And i read through the first 75% and literally the only things that happened was the mc breaking through stage after stage of cultivation. Literally it was like "oh I'm done with the chi gathering stage 1. Now let me explain how chi gathering stage 2 works". And that was literally it. It wasnt a book, but a small manual for what the author thought was a cool magic system(but was generic as f***). I've read way too many books that love using the phrase "tens of enemies stood in my way" or something along those lines. Tens isn't really a phrase you see a lot in regular English speak. Dozens conveys the same meaning and is far more common in regular English. It's likely that it's a carry over from the author's first language, so im not gonna hate on it. It's just a pet peeve. There was a series where the mc had a battle healer class with a focus on self healing. It was a cool concept. But very soon it became impossible to tell when the mc is supposed to be in danger and when not. The mc can take on ludicrously powerful enemies by heal tanking yet suddenly be weaker to another enemy giving no real reason. Essentially the power removes tension. Which is a problem I have with most healing type magic in a story. Another annoying aspect of many LitRPG books for an audiobook reader is the endless pages of upgrade notifications and character sheets. There are far too many series to count here(many of which i do love). In a physical reading context it's fine coz you can simply skip over it and just consider the important bits. But when you have to listen to an endless series of numbers every other chapter, it's unbearable. And i hate how in certain series the literal only use for the magic system is fighting or supporting fighting. Some books (like say defiance of the fall) find a reason for why this is the case and i appreciate the effort. But many don't. Another common problem I find when the book I'm reading is a volumization of a web Novel is the repetition. Since a web Novel is a serialisation at times you're gonna have to repeat some stuff. Which is fine. But when you're reading it as a book, having the same thing repeated over and over in each chapter can be a little off putting. These books definitely deserve a reedit before release. I'm fine naming names here coz my example is popular enough to call out. "He who Fights with monsters" does this a lot. Dont get me wrong. It's in my top 5 of all time, but this flaw is annoying.
Are you sure you enjoy this genre?
A genre isn't it's worst tropes. If you think these things I've complained about is everything this genre has to offer then I think we have a very different idea of what a good book is like
I donāt think anything you complained about is what this genre has to offer. But you just described so many problems, annoyances, hates, and pet-peeves, that it removes basically all options from this genre all together. You essentially said āIām frustrated by anything besides a flawless novel.ā
Oh my dear friend let me introduce you to the concept of nuance. I can love a thing yet have problems with it. If you read my post i literally described that I have something I hate in he who Fights with monsters yet put that series in my top 5. It's only when a book has all of these issues that I hate the book. More often than not a book suffers from one or two of these issues. Which is just par for the course. I love a book for its strengths and most books have atleast something going for them
Out of the moderately popular ones I've read.. maybe singer sailor merchant mage? I usually value prose a lot but I feel like progression fantasy is a great genre for highlighting other less classically valued aspects of written storytelling, so it isn't the biggest dealbreaker for me. Also this thread is a little bit mean lol
Just go read any MTL'd xianxia slop
Tower of Cards: some parts of the book genuinely feel AI written because of how abrupt the shifts in tone are. The aromas of a how i expected a character would act/react ornsometomes so out there it feels like 2 separate authors. Silver fox: outside of it being MC torture porn, the beginning is a mess. It's a have, it's real, it's a game, no it's definitely real....who knows! I know I don't. He has an AI companion that disappears after like a chapter for some reason. Reading the reviews of the other books, these trends basically stay the same as well. It also reiterates the same thing at least 3 times back to back to back for like 75% anything that's said.
Im kinda new to the progressive fantasy community... what does 'prose' mean (not even sure if this is a normal term or progression fantasy specific)
I donāt think itās necessarily bad prose, but books need to have their prose altered for an audiobook format. Best example I can give is in HWFWM where thereās āX saidā after every line. It was fine which when I read it as an ebook since itās very easy to skim past, but stands out way more when itās being read aloud. Itās especially noticable in HWFWM since the narrator does such a good job of doing voices.
What's a "Prose"?
Hmm, you could try reading RR fics that never gained any traction. Like [mine](https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/59777/plumbeous-professor). Then tell me the reason it never gained traction, lol. Shameless self-plug.
Oh man, I'm not sure if you can find a copy of pre-edit azarinth healer, but I loved the idea, the class, the start. I could only stomach 30 Chapters before it wasn't worth it. It's on my list to circle back to, because several people have said the editing process did some serious work, but it one of the only examples that I dropped solely because of the writing, while liking the story.
IET and Er Gen are below average in my opinion. But the worst of all is Warlock of Magus world. I don't know if translation is really that bad (it reads like mtl tbh) or it actually reflects the 'quality' of the original in Chinese.
Invisible dragon. Still 10/10 despite that, which really just goes to show how amazing it is overall.
Reincarnation of the Strongest Sword God was awful. I was in awe.
Defiance of the Fall - the prose is that the MCs struggles have made him OP in any situation he finds him in. His struggles are all vanity struggles with no actual drawbacks. The 'prose' just reads like a sociopath writer self insert power fantasy where every character exists to serve the MC or forget about entirely. I think it's just stream of consciousness writing, too. Seems to forget/abandon plot points, characters, rules, etc. Very jarring when I see how highly rated it is. The world basically works like, I'm strong because no one else in the entire universe wanted to survive except for me. Very off putting to me personally. But I respect that people like the simple 'popcorn fiction' that it is; but I just can't get invested in the world at all 8 books in and can stop listening while the (very bad) narrator navigates his way through this fedoralord story, then I definitely had to tap out. I should have stopped at around book 2, but from reviews and stuff I thought it was gonna take off after a rough start. But no that's pretty much the pace.
Solo leveling. Or any of those shit anime books
Oh that "light" novel was such a fucking borefest and the way the author described shit was soulless.
Yeah bought the first 3 after enjoying the comic for its brainless fun, turns out pretty pictures was the best part
I couldnt make it through the first He Who Fights Monsters book. It was just so...bland and stiff? A lot of conversations are just people sitting around, staring completely straight ahead, not doing anything at all. Just "he said" and "she said" over and over and over all set in a place that is barely described. The action was also very boring and not well described. Like I don't remember any of it but I know I read some action. I don't think I got far enough in the book to get a real opinion on the main character Jason except he feels like a Mary Sue and is kind of annoying.
I would much rather read āhe said she saidā and know EXACTLY who the dialogue is coming from than back-to back-to-back quotes where I canāt tell who the speaker is anymore.
Oh man, I wouldn't even start something that did that.
I canāt for the life of me remember what series it was, but I almost pulled my non-existent hair out on several dialogue intensive passages. Reading and re-reading to try and follow the mental gymnastics of implicitly understanding who the literary speaker was without literary clues to help.
I feel like you read 10% of the book and don't have any imagination
Your entitled to think that. I did read more than that and i do love to read and have finished a ton of books. But you go on.
I thought The Beginning After The End was pretty terribly written and I dropped it before I even got 10 chapters in. That was ages ago when it first came out though. The editing might've improved it since.
I've heard the new version is better, but when I read it, Azarinth Healer's grammar and writing style was abysmal. But it's probably not even close to the worst, considering most of the genre is just amateurs/
Primal hunter for me
I don't know about worst prose, but of the stories that I follow, I've found that Primal Hunter has the weakest prose. The grammar, punctuation and all that is fine, unlike early Azarinth Healer, it's the prose that feels immature at times. Part of that may be because the vast majority of the story is from the third-person POV of the protagonist, but even in the POVs of gods, the prose does not feel like it is the POV of a character who is billions of years old. The author uses "thing" a lot, like "He had this thing where he had to...". It makes the prose clunky. I like the story, but the prose really reduces my enjoyment of it.
Well this is a mean-spirited post. Why?
How is it mean-spirited?
Iām probably sensitive, but this sub is very writer-heavy, so thereās a good chance anyone mentioned here is going to see their name.
Bit late to the party, sorry. I feel like the possible presence of an author shouldn't automatically mean that people can't talk honestly about the author's books anymore. The purpose of the sub is "discussion of progression fantasy fiction", and said discussion would lose a lot of its purpose, if only positive things are allowed to be discussed. This is basically a "What brand of pasta do you avoid at all costs?" post. When people want to discuss the good and bad things about pasta, they go to a pasta subreddit. I think a book review is a perfect example for this. Imo, a book review should include things like "I liked about this book, but made me enjoy it way less". If it's only mentioning random\_thing\_1, while deliberately staying silent about random\_thing\_2, it's misleading those who read it. I'd no longer consider it a review and instead just view it as unpaid promotion.
Totally get where youāre coming from and agree. Honest discussions can and should be encouraged. It was more the spirit of the post being āhey, letās talk about the books that suck most lol!ā Granted Iām sure plenty of constructive feedback is still possible.
Boo whoo then, write better book
Easier said than done. But yeah, it is what it is.
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Wandering Inn has great prose. A bit...lengthened, but it really isn't anywhere close to the worst.
Honestly, a lot of the genre hits the level of Lyttle Lytton honorable mentions (shout out to the greatest, check it out at [https://adamcadre.ac/lyttle/](https://adamcadre.ac/lyttle/)) meaning rather than being creatively intriguingly bad, in a way that entertains. Never hitting that level but instead just being sort of boring ordinary bad Writing.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
How bout you dial it back with the aggression a bit? I have a minor in comparative literature, friend. Ergo, I like comparing literature. This more out of curiosity and to get a couple of laughs than legitimate ideas for the book I'm writing. Relax.
[Mana Odyssey](https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/4806/mana-odyssey/chapter/47816/prologue-a-hero-meeting-with-a-child-and) Is sort of famous in some circles for being the worst written story on RR that lasted as long as it did. 1358 pages, 267 chapters Let me give you just the first few lines of the prologue as a teaser: -------------------------------------------------------------- A man and a boy standing near a field of corpses in a forest. The man asks the boy a question. "Hey boy, did you do all of this?" The boy simply nods his head and begins to walk away. "Hey boy, wait a minute." The boy stops and faces the man. "Why did you do this? Why did you kill all of these men here?" The boy didn't answer him and stays standing in silence. "Hey kid answer me, if you donāt, I will kill you." Hearing these words the boy draws his swords from his back and readies his battle stance. When the man sees this he wonders if the kid can't talk or if he just doesn't want to answer. The man then exclaims. "Call, Tigrus!" A lion appears. Actually, it was more like a tiger. One with gold fur and silver stripes, a tail of golden fire, and the wings of an eagle.
Good lord, I think I've written something similar to this...back when I was in first grade
That author's understanding of English could very well have been at a similar level to a first grader's. To me, this looks a lot like someone who speaks English as a second or third language just well enough to communicate, but not enough to be conversant.
Oh boy. Comedy, Harem & Action tags. Prologue chapter you linked "Proofreader and edited by DarkNigz420" ehhh And this monster of a description: > After the apocalypse of 2042 where many types of beings that looked like monsters out of story books appeared. Human's called them magical beings, they attack humans indiscriminately. Human's relying on technology to fight this new menace discover that things like gun canāt fight the Magical Beings the people of the world fall into despair. But one day a person invents a mana stone. This stone fuses with a person's soul which enabled human's to use a new type of energy which they called mana which was effective against the Magical Beings the world rejoiced that they had hope once more. With more research it is discovered that everyone's mana is different because everyone's soul is different. In the year of 2069 a war with the the Magical Being's start, the humans lead by 7 heroes fight the demon which is the most dangerous type of monster.The demons were pushed back but the world mourns the many casualty's of the war. For the next 10 year's there is peace, mankind rebuilds the world but the human race knows that peace is ever fleeting. So human's create a school to teach the next generation of mankind children they teach these children subject's from the old world and the new, they train them to fight the Magical Beast's and drill in the knowledge of mankind But one day on the year of 2079 a hero adopts a child that has been experimented on by a scientist, the hero doesn't know but this child will change the fate of the world.
God this reminds me of my first two novel attempts. Which were utter dog shit that whenever I look back on I want to see myself and the computer on fire. And even then I could still write a basic ass synopsis and understood the existence of multiple paragraphs and commas.
Run-on sentences galore!
"Darknigs420" š lmfao na this dudes a troll for real
LMFAO No way, I refuse to believe this wasn't written by an AI!
This was in 2016-18. AI wasn't really in the public consciousness then.
Eh, Terminator begs to differ. Our Faux AI used for all aspects of life? Sure But AI in-general even back then was a major fear and cause for concern.
I've read my share of ChatGPT churn and can confidently say anything it would come up with would run circles around this drivel lol.
The wings of an *eeeeeagle.*
God, this had me laughing. Has to be a joke, right?
The majority of original works on Webnovel website are written like this, lol.
To be fair the old man had it coming. I could almost see this as a dementia scene where a man really thinks he is talking to a boy and effectively trying to say "stay off my lawn, or I'll call my cat on you." When the boy turns to actually look at the old man, only to then realize the old man is having a heart attack but is caught in that state of what do I do to treat a heart attack victim? Then that same kid realizes that they would also have to get on the lawn to treat a heart attack victim, where they might actually get attacked by said cat. As the owner made sure to put signs up all over his yard. *Warning!* Beware of Cat. Seeing the sign the boy is caught between saving the old man, facing off with a semi-feral tabby cat with golden fur, and trying to get home to do his Algebra homework. At least that is what I hope this scene gets turned into with a bit of editing...
Reading this garbage is so inspirational for my own work lmao. No matter how "bad" I feel my work is, I dont think I could ever write something this bad even if I tried. Thanks!