Reading Bad Fiction is Good, Actually

Don't only read good books, read terrible ones too -Alen Moore.

I tried to read My Immortal years ago. Asides from the trauma of seeing the English language get violated and Dumbledore swearing like a bad-tempered sailor, I realized just how important it was to spell-check my writing. All this was before I discovered that video by BBC Manifesto where the above quote is pulled from.

The main problem that reading bad fiction entails (asides from the evident anger and frustration) is the cost involved. How much money are you prepared to spend on The Liar of the White Worm, for example? Or for Fifty Shades of Gray or even modern Marvel/DC? That question differs for each writer depending on the budget. I minimize the cost as much as possible. I got Empress Theresa (Priase her) for nothing, thanks to connections on Reddit. I got books like Atlas Shrugged, Lair of the White Worm, and Fifty Shades of Gray by sacrificing an audible credit for the exchange. When neither option is possible, I tend to go for the budget of 100/200R (Rands for all the non-South Africans out there); it’s a tactic I used when I attempted to be a video game reviewer (it didn’t work) to minimize costs when buying bad products.

You have to be prepared for not getting money back when getting a bad product; you also have to accept that the product will be on your shelf or somewhere within the house.

The latter is the most horrifying of the burdens.

You must also read and study the bad book, fighting the urge to drop the book and read anything else.

The important thing that many other writers and I also needed to learn is that you are investing time into your skills and craft, with the hopeful promise that your skills acquired from reading bad books get that sweet big five publisher deal. How else should you justify wasting your time and energy reading Empress Theasa? We all have to try and justify our mistakes and failures somehow.

The critical thing to remember is that as writers, we have to read a lot, and we have to consume stories more than the average consumer of entertainment of media. We do it to learn from our betters, our equals, and our lessors.

So don’t worry too much about spending money on bad books; while you should always minimize the costs, don’t regret slogging through The Lair of the White Worm (like I have).

And there can be fun to have in reading bad fiction; I love reading Empress Theasa because I like reading Eldtrich literature. I love to chat with my friends and my writing collages about Atlas Shrugged, Fifty Shades of Gray, and The Lair of the White Worm because it’s fun to talk and suffer through bad books. The blog posts I have done for terrible games and books have been the most fun posts to write because I can slip so much snark into my writing. Bad things are the best to talk about.

If there is anything positive you can get out of reading My Immortal, it is that you and your friends can talk about it. You are being provided with free social icebreakers!

Cheers for reading.

Acknowledgments

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