I can always find examples of great ideas being so badly written that my first impulse is to close the tab and never read it again. Then I would have lost the chance to read that story, but is it worth it? And there comes the question: can one say that it's a good story even if it's written badly?

The virtue in the idea

_{Image taken from Pixabay}

There are very mundane stories about nothing in particular that are a pleasure to read. Words just flow and you keep reading, even though you don't know why you like it, or if you even like it, you just know that you can't stop reading and that you feel good when you pass your eyes over the words and understand their meaning.

But often times, somebody will try to show something excitedly, saying "look at this amazing thing I found", and when you try to read it, you'll be left with a feeling of uncertainty. Is it really good? The idea seems... like it could be developed into something, I think? But why is it that I just want you to shut up?

Some authors say that you can't be truly "original", that everything has already been written and everything new that you say is just a new connection. Maybe it's the way you tell it, after all, or maybe there are awesome connections to be made, bits of previously existing information to be picked and developed into something great, into an interconnected mass of everything that you wanted to point at (because that is what words are, just pointing at images in your brain that you relate to concrete or abstract things that may or may not be real).

Some examples

When I started writing, I liked to play with metaphorical fantasy. That's everything I did. When I was sad, I would describe Hell and put the things I didn't like in there. The shadows would be my sleepiness, the evil eyes that threatened to eat me alive would be the various tormentors that influenced my childhood. But then, I started reading a lot and I found, after I was already 22, that there were stories that I wanted to tell that didn't really relate to my particular feelings at the moment,

Sometimes I just read novels and found that I hated the way they were written in, but they had really good ideas. I ended up writing about many of them. I treated them like my muses and I kept reading them for months in a row, sometimes not doing anything for days but lie on my bed and read the same badly written piece for days on end.

Most of these are amateur Chinese web novels or Harry Potter fanfictions. Let's just pick a few ones to show you.

Martial God Asura by Kindhearted Bee

(Chinese people use these kind of generic names on the Internet)

This one has some great premises and something that you know that I love very much, which is detailed descriptions of places. I just love travelling imaginary worlds and this novel has many amazing landscapes. But... the writer is childish, sexist and thinks that his readers are sociopath children (and maybe they are). I cringe every few minutes while I read it, but I just can't stop. I've already read more than 2000 chapters and I just can't stop. Why? I think that it's because it's a great story even though it's terribly written.

Or maybe it's not the story but the ideas. The "story" itself is of a character's unending road into immortality and avenging his family. He's a typical Mary Sue, cannot die, cannot lose and if he loses, he probably murders the villain a few chapters later and maybe tortures him and a myriad of other things that this author is fond on. I don't particularly enjoy any of this craze, but I love the surrounding ideas.

There is a unique social hierarchy from which I've learned a lot about our own society and learned to cherish my family. There are beautiful landscapes. There are many fruits and seeds that I would like to eat, some magic rituals that have awesome consequences, and beautiful landscapes. But it's barely unreadable. I don't know why I do it.

Shura's Wrath by 火星引力

(I don't know the translation of this name)

This is another Chinese web novel I loved. It also has a Mary Sue character with terrible habits and there's a lot of things that I'm not at all fond of. There's also a lot of sexism and weird stuff that the Chinese seem to love. I don't know why I can't find any web novel without sexism or egotist main characters.

Anyway, I love the landscapes,. Many of the characters are awesome and very original. The rhythm is also mesmerizing. But the writing style is terrible, the character is indestructible (if you read my stories, you know that I kill about half of my main characters; I just can't stand an author's bias; Go, Game of Thrones! Kill them all). I find myself wondering how I even ended up reading this kind of stuff. Then I remember that ideas can be great and be accompanied by an author's arrogance and unneeded additives.

Legendary Moonlight Sculptor by Nam-Hi-Sung (남희성)

This one is the first web novel I read. I think that it is my favorite. There are many beautiful images and ideas in the story. However, all the translations are machine translations and the writer makes many mistakes. The plot is also repetitive and extremely predictable and the text is unreadable most of the time.

The landscapes are awesome. Some characters are awesome (although terribly developed and described). It was the first time I read something of the genre and this was one of my main motivators to write good, very descriptive literature about topics I love.

Coiling Dragon by I Eat Tomatoes

This novel has my favorite landscapes. There are thousands of worlds, although only as many as 6 or 7 are described. Each of them has countless parts that also have their unique characteristics. There is an amethist mountain, some hellish places, beautiful landscapes covered with dragons, and oh so many things.

I could feel myself become a tourist in the writer's mind. This writer also has many other novels that have the same style. They all have original landscapes very distinct from each other, so I read a couple of them and loved them as well. The only other novel names by him that I remember right now is Stellar Transformations.

All ideas deserve love

"Don't buy, adopt", animal's rights usually say. I think something similar about ideas. I think that if we cannot create things, there's nothing wrong with taking a very badly developed idea by another writer, turning it around, building upon it, giving it the loving company of other ideas, and writing an awesome story with them. It all ends up being original and your own, but the excellent ideas that you found don't get forgotten and abandoned out of disgust. Instead, they are given a new home and thrown at readers to masticate and admire.

And then, give credit to the origin of the idea if you can, like I just did. Maybe there are writers who deserve some love even though they don't know how to write very well.

_{Image taken from Pixabay}

What are some things that have evoked this feeling in you?

Leave me some comments and votes. I really appreciate them!

Chat with me on Discord!