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The Genius’ Guide to Bad Writingby R.T. Slaywood, R.C. Martinez Kindle Edition, 39 pg. Read: September 4, 2021 |
It’s time to disappoint your readers!
What’s The Genius’ Guide to Bad Writing About?
A guide for the writer who is tired of success and wants to reclaim their lives from answering the siren call of fortune and fame that comes to every author. Slaywood and Martinez have a 10-Step program guaranteed to ruin a novel or two and stop a career dead in its spot.
Obviously, this is a satire—although I can think of more than a few authors that seem to have found this book before its publication (I’m going to assume it slipped through a wormhole and was delivered to them years ago). I’ll be nice and not name names here, but I think Slaywood and Martinez are owed some money if they could figure out how to collect it.
The “Illustrations”
I thought the idea behind this was clever and well-executed. They picked up a half-star from me for this. It reminded me of the footnotes in Heads You Lose by Lisa Lutz, David Hayward, but with a different flavor.
Formatting
The formatting on part of this is a little iffy—it largely is going to depend on what device you use to read it. My Paperwhite was fine but it was irritating to read on my phone (I’d wager my Fire Tablet would’ve been okay, but maybe not as nice as my Paperwhite—I’m just too lazy to charge the thing for this post). But the amount of irritation is minimal, this is just a caveat lector (mostly inspired by an online review that seemed overly irritated).
The Table of Contents is just wonky and ugly, but I’m 60% sure it’s supposed to be. And even if I’m wrong, it’s the Contents, if you’re spending enough time on a 39-page book to get worked up about a poorly formatted Table of Contents, you really need to ask yourself some questions about your priorities.
So, what did I think about The Genius’ Guide to Bad Writing?
It bothers me greatly to write something so brief, but with 39 pages, there’s not a lot to say unless I give a line-by-line commentary.
It is intended to be a brief work, and I don’t hold the length against it. I enjoyed what is there, while I do think I’d be happier on a bang-for-my-buck level if the book was twice as long. Unless the authors were just on fire, more than twice as long would’ve gotten tiresome (see: The White Man’s Guide to White Male Writers of the Western Canon).
This is a quick, fun read that’ll bring a grin to the face of readers. Take a few minutes and enjoy yourselves.
