Bad Writing Index

""You can't just start making up terrible new words!""

- Strong Sad, Homestar Runner, "fan club"

This is an index of tropes that are often indicative of plain bad writing.

When done unintentionally, these tropes are usually bad signs. When done intentionally, they're often signs of parody, comedy, or just the writer being ironic or stylized. Hopefully...

See also:
 * Discredited Trope - A trope which is considered a Cliche.
 * Pet Peeve Trope - A trope that is disliked by certain audiences.
 * Sturgeons Tropes - When the trope is used, there's about 90% chance that it will lower the reception of the work.
 * Unexpected Reactions to This Index
 * Eight Deadly Words - "I don't care what happens to these people."

Contrast:
 * Necessary Weasel - An unrealistic trope which the audience expects to be there.
 * Stylistic Suck - Making a work/art style etc. bad on purpose.
 * Who Writes This Crap - When a show's writing is criticized In-Universe.
 * They Just Didn't Care - When the audience feels that the creators weren't even making an effort.
 * Intended Audience Reaction - An attempt to intentionally evoke a reaction from the audience.

Not to be mistaken for Writers Suck, which has more to do with Butt Monkeys than bad writing.

Crazy Characterization

 * Aesop Amnesia: The more times a character is taught a lesson without learning it, the lower the viewer's opinion of him/her and you.
 * Angst What Angst: Make your characters react realistically to setbacks or tragic events. Too little Angst makes them unrealistic and callous.
 * Character Derailment: Characters can grow, but don't suddenly mutate them into something else.
 * Character Shilling: Having characters suddenly talk up another character for no real reason doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
 * Chickification: Stripping the action from an Action Girl does not work, and pisses off all the feminists in the audience.
 * Conflict Ball: Don't have a character cause conflict just because the plot says so.
 * Derailing Love Interests: Breaking up a promising relationship just to get the official couple together is not going to sit well with the viewers who care more about the characters than the concept.
 * Designated Hero: Having your hero Kick the Dog and still expecting your audience to accept him as the Good Guy because you say he is doesn't usually work. If you want your hero Darker and Edgier, an Anti Hero or Villain Protagonist will usually work better.
 * Jerk Sue: Having a character be a complete Jerkass who gets away with it just because the author designates them as such and says you should support them does not make for a strong character, and is more likely going to turn out be a case of Creators Pet, and often The Scrappy. Also, it tends to look like a half-assed effort when the author just throws in some secondary throw-away detail in an attempt to make you feel sorry for the character and expect you to not get upset when they behave like a jerk for no other reason than they feel like it at the time.
 * Designated Protagonist Syndrome: If you can't write a decent character without them being overshadowed by more interesting characters then maybe you should try to focus on a better character.
 * Designated Villain: Treating the villain as a Complete Monster even if nothing in the story indicates anything more than pettiness.
 * Die for Our Ship: Attacking a rival of your pairing of choice doesn't necessarily make that character a bad person.
 * Distress Ball: Running head-first into danger is a bad way to get things moving.
 * Failure Hero: While having the hero lose from time to time adds some realism to the hero, if he or she loses every single fight or mission, he or she will destroy any and all tension.
 * Faux Action Girl: If you say that a girl is strong, then actually make them strong.
 * Flanderization (including Took a Level In Dumbass and Took a Level In Jerkass): When done unsuccessfully.
 * Generic Doomsday Villain: A villain who is super-mega-powerful, but has no personality, clear goals or motive.
 * Hero Ball: Heroes are expected to make dumb decisions every now and then, but when they directly aid the villains, it becomes this trope.
 * Idiot Ball: When the character is suddenly acting like an idiot.
 * Invincible Hero: A hero who can't lose.
 * Invincible Villain: A villain who can't lose.
 * Mary Sue: A flawless, invincible character who never loses at anything makes for a boring story. Mary Sue Tropes and Common Mary Sue Traits contain lots of information on different types of Sue.
 * Motive Decay: If the villain has a motive, they should be expected to at least attempt to carry through with it (if not to its conclusion).
 * New Powers As the Plot Demands: A character gains a new ability depending on the situation.
 * Out of Character: Moments when the character does something that he wouldn't normally do without any justification.
 * Stupid Sacrifice: Characters shouldn't give up their lives for nothing (if the character is not a Martyr Without a Cause).
 * Villain Ball: See Hero Ball, only swap "heroes" and "villains".
 * Villain Sue
 * Wangst: Make your characters react realistically to setbacks or tragic events. Too much Angst makes them unrealistic and annoying.
 * Wimpification: Stripping the action, common sense, and characterization from a male character to add Wangst and gender stereotypes applied to females is a good way to piss off many of the audience, including but not limited to feminists and actual gay or bisexual men.

See also Contrived Stupidity Tropes.

Poor Plotting
Bad Plotting can make for a bad story:
 * Ass Pull: Make sure that every new character/plot point that you invoke is foreshadowed first.
 * Cliffhanger Copout: This is what happens when a Cliff Hanger's resolution comes in the form of tweaking the continuity between back-to-back installments (usually creating Plot Holes), a refusal/failure to follow through with delivering a big Reveal after setting an audience up for one, or outright aborting a story arc.
 * The Chris Carter Effect: It's a good idea to actually finish things. Sooner or later, the audience will get bored with you screwing around and not getting to the point.
 * Coitus Ensues: Don't write a sex scene if there's no reason for the involved characters to have sex.
 * Continuity Snarl: Plotlines can snag if you aren't careful.
 * Deus Angst Machina: Too much misfortune makes too little Willing Suspension of Disbelief.
 * Deus Ex Machina: Do not save your characters with an Ass Pull.
 * Diabolus Ex Machina: A Downer Ending pulled out of thin air might be amusing for shock value, but it doesn't make for great storytelling.
 * Ending Fatigue: The viewer should probably not be yelling "END ALREADY!"
 * Fridge Logic: Though much more forgivable than a Plot Hole, this can be bad if it doesn't have enough Fridge Horror or Fridge Brilliance to go along with it. If you have a complicated universe, don't gloss over the minor details.
 * Gratuitous Rape: Don't have a rape scene just for the hell of it.
 * Idiot Plot: Unless it's part of their character, the plot should not be forced to move forward solely by people making stupid decisions.
 * It Gets Better: Just as the viewer shouldn't demand the work to end already as with Ending Fatigue, they shouldn't be forced to sit through hours of exposition or padding to get to the actual plot.
 * Just Eat Gilligan: If there's an obvious solution to the problem(s) that drives the story, you would think the characters would go for it rather than ignoring it.
 * Kudzu Plot: It's fine to have a dozen different story threads at once, but you have to be able to tie them together. If they go off into infinity without ever being tied, who's going to care about any of them? The pieces of your Jigsaw Puzzle Plot have to fit.
 * Offstage Villainy: We need to see that the villain is evil. Being told so doesn't automatically make him/her "evil".
 * Only the Author Can Save Them Now: Do not put your characters in a situation where only a Deus Ex Machina can save them.
 * Plot Hole: Don't think the audience won't see when you forget to cover something.
 * Romantic Plot Tumor: Unless the plot is romance, don't let it take over.
 * Series Continuity Error: When you set something in stone, you can't chisel it out without leaving marks.
 * Shocking Swerve: Don't have a Twist Ending just to have a Twist Ending.
 * Stranger Behind the Mask: If you're going to have a Reveal, make sure that the revealed character has been met before.
 * The Stations of the Canon: When important events in a Divergence Fic are treated more as checkmarks than plot points.
 * Trapped By Mountain Lions: If someone's in a story, they should be part of the plot, too.
 * Unfortunate Implications: Be careful which characters you put through hell and in what ways, because it might give viewers the wrong idea.
 * A Wizard Did It: "It's magic," is not an explanation. Even in fantasy unless explained very well, it will be seen as a fantasy Ass Pull.
 * Voodoo Shark: When patching over a Plot Hole creates a different, possibly more troublesome, problem.
 * Yo Yo Plot Point: It's okay if a few plot points repeat themselves throughout the series, but if it's the same story every other episode, your audience is bound to get bored.

Senseless Styles
In amateur writing (or stuff that just simply didn't get the proper proofreading), bad writing is sometimes inherent in the form and presentation of the work itself:
 * Author Filibuster: The reader/viewer/player/etc is (theoretically) interested in the plot. Stopping it so that you can talk about something that's important to you will only make them less interested in what you're writing.
 * Blind Idiot Translation: This are conversion bad tofu.
 * Character Filibuster: Putting those words in someone else's mouth doesn't help.
 * Concepts Are Cheap: Using concepts and buzz words to pad out a thin script.
 * Emphasize Everything: If everything is emphasized, then nothing is, and you've done nothing of value except annoy your audience.
 * Featureless Plane of Disembodied Dialogue: Conversation doesn't happen in a vacuum.
 * How Do I Used Tense: Unintentional shifts in tense are highly distracted and confusing.
 * Informed Attribute: Saying something is so is not the same as making it so.
 * Meaningless Meaningful Words: "Brevity is the soul of wit." or for those who don't know Shakespeare, here is some Twain for you: "Use the right word, not its second cousin."
 * No Punctuation Period: Run-on sentences make a story much harder to read.
 * Refuge in Vulgarity: Vulgarity alone doesn't make something funny.
 * Rouge Angles of Satin: Misspelling words, possibly resulting in a valid but wrong word being used.
 * Said Bookism: A form of Purple Prose. Using fancy substitutes for the word "said" in the fear that the dialogue doesn't speak for itself.
 * Show Don't Tell: Telling the reader that something is X, rather than showing it's X is a sign of laziness on the author's part.
 * And That's Terrible: Telling the reader how evil the villain is, instead of showing it (or even doing both).
 * That Makes Me Feel Angry: Telling the reader what a character is feeling, instead of showing it.
 * Straw Man Has a Point: If you can't even attack strawmen without being defeated, you may need a new profession.
 * Translation Train Wreck: Bad translations to not possible to misunderstand not not favorable.
 * Unintentionally Sympathetic: Failure to create antipathy to a character in the audience.
 * Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Failure to create sympathy to a character in the audience.
 * Wall of Text: The formatting (or lack thereof) combined with a lot of redundant words makes the text seem impenetrable, and will make the reader lose the track after a few lines.
 * The War On Straw: Not a direct cause of bad writing, but a frequent component of it nevertheless.
 * Wanton Cruelty to The Common Comma: Other bad grammar and usage.
 * Were Still Relevant Dammit: Blatant attempts at keeping Long Runners current often are starts of a Dork Age.
 * Writer On Board: This is a story, not a treatise.

See also Stylistic Suck

TV Tropes Style
This Wiki is not exempt from this. Please consult the Permanent Red Link Club for further details.


 * Conversation in The Main Page: Remember, TV Tropes is a wiki, not a forum or chatroom. Conversations just clog up the articles and make them too long/tedious to read.
 * Examples Are Not Arguable: If you're not sure if what you're writing is an example or not, take it to the discussion page instead of coating your example with Weasel Words.
 * Examples Are Not Recent: When writing an example, avoid using the word "recent." What's considered recent now won't be in a couple of years. It just makes more trouble for other tropers to edit out the word "recent" once it isn't recent anymore. Act as if every work that was ever published came out several years ago.
 * Justifying Edit: Tropes Are Not Bad. Avoid responding to examples with a "to be fair" addendum. If a trope is actually Justified Trope, the justification should be added into the example itself.
 * Not a Subversion: Misuse of the word "Subverted Trope." A common sign of this is use of phrases such as "partially subverted" or "somewhat subverted."
 * Sinkhole: When making a Pothole, make sure that the article being linked bears relevance to the Pot Holed text.
 * Square Peg Round Trope: Make sure that the example that you want to add fully fits the trope. If it's "not really an example", then it's not really an example, and it shouldn't be added.
 * This Troper: Writing about oneself in a Main wiki article. The goal is to make Main articles sound like a single person is editing the article, not multiple people. Besides, personal comments just clog up the articles.
 * Type Labels Are Not Examples: Any relevant context needed to explain the example should be given in the example itself. Don't simply label it "type X" and force the reader to open a separate page just so they can understand what it means.
 * Weblinks Are Not Examples: If one has a trope example, one should write it down, in adequate detail, where it is relevant, not rely on a URL link to some other page to explain what it is.
 * Word Cruft: When writing an example, just stick to writing the example and try to avoid saying useless things that don't need to be said.
 * Zero Context Example: If you're going to leave an example, please explain what it is. Not everyone will understand what you've written about.

Bad Game Design

 * Disappointing Last Level: Be sure players still have interest in finishing your game by the time they reach the final level.
 * Game Breaking Bug: Don't let a glitch cripple the playability of your game.
 * Unwinnable By Mistake: Thoroughly test your game before releasing it to ensure that it is reasonably difficult but not impossible to beat.
 * Obvious Beta: Clean your game up and make it look presentable before releasing it.

See also Error Index

Unclassified

 * Broken Aesop (when not Played for Laughs or spoofed): The lesson you teach should match what the story shows.
 * Canon Defilement: People who are reading your Fanfic probably enjoy the show for what it is. Not for what you would like it to be. Seeing beloved characters mangled into whatever form you desire is probably going to cut down on your audience, unless you're Neil Gaiman.
 * Captain Obvious Aesop: Don't try and teach your audience something that they already know.
 * Clueless Aesop: Don't try to put something in a place where it doesn't belong.
 * Dan Browned: If you haven't done the research, don't claim you have.
 * Demonization: Some of your potential audience may actually see where this position is coming from, if not actually agree. You'll turn them off by your exaggerated portrayal. It also makes it seem like the position you hold isn't nearly as solid as you think, since it can only stand up to strawmen.


 * IKEA Erotica: Sex should only be as boring as it is to the participants.
 * I Suck At Summaries: If you can't be bothered to summarise your fic properly, then why should people be bothered to read it?
 * Lost Aesop: If you're going to present some "truth", make sure you do it.
 * Mary Suetopia: Mary Sue in society form is still Mary Sue.
 * Moral Dissonance: Don't have the hero behave contrary to his usual morality and be completely oblivious to it. Also see Angst What Angst.
 * Narm (when caused by the writing): Make your dramatic/climactic scenes convincing, not cheesy. Don't go over-the-top. Make it realistic. Think about how a person in Real Life would behave in the situation.
 * Nightmare Retardant (when caused by the writing): If something is supposed to be scary, either don't show it or actually make it scary.
 * Relationship Writing Fumble: Viewers can latch onto romantic Subtext, even in places where it's not supposed to be.
 * Strangled By the Red String: People going directly from being strangers to being genuinely in love is not very realistic or satisfying to watch.
 * Viewers Are Morons: This is a lie. Most of the time, anyway.
 * Writer Cop Out: Have the strength to follow through, or don't take the shot at all.