Rotten Apple (Writing A Kindle Experiment)

I thought that writing something in a deliberately bad writing style would be liberating. And to an extent, it was. It meant it was very easy to go with my first idea for a plot, twist, scene or line of dialogue more often than not – but it also had another counter-intuitive effect. It highlighted the non-deliberate bad writing even more than normal.

Moreover, it made that non-deliberate bad writing hard to ignore. It just pointed at it and said “Look, LOOK. You’re doing exactly what you’re mocking, you twunt.”

Nom nom nom
Yummy Scrummy In My Tummy

That said, it provides a lovely wall to hide behind. If anyone points out a bit of bad writing, I can simply lie and say it was deliberate.

Ahem.

Another thing I learned, and maybe not to my advantage, is that clichéd plots have their own built-in structure. Their three acts are just there, staring right at you, the moment you think about it. They wave at you from their set-ups, dance up and down on their midpoints, and kick you so hard in the arse you can’t help but stumble in to their resolutions.

I did baulk at some of the characters I met along the way. Shugg Jackson for one. He was very one-note, even by this world’s own standards, and I felt compelled to add another layer to him that probably wouldn’t have been there in the worst excesses of the genre. But I came to like Vic Malone quite a lot.

Anyway, time for the inevitable plug.

Buy Rotten Apple from Amazon UK.

Or from Amazon USA.

And no, you don’t need to buy a Kindle to read it, your PC will do just fine.

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