lol i love it plz write more

Good writing is surprisingly easy to find on the Internet these days. I've already mentioned Ficlets here, and although there's quite a bit of poor stuff on there, you'll also run across the odd gem. Then there's the old classics available at Project Gutenberg (it's because of that and ReadManiac that I can read Sherlock Holmes stories on my mobile any time I like - you know, if I ever want to squint at books on a minuscule screen), and endless novels and short stories released under Creative Commons licensing. If your eyes get tired, you can always switch to audiobooks as well.

But that isn't what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about the wide-ranging swathes of mind-bogglingly poor writing available online. Not simply teen LiveJournal posts, either, as that's caused less by a lack of writing skills and more by a simple shift in the location of personal diaries - an ill-advised shift, to be sure, but really there's nothing particularly new in the wrong people seeing angsty teenagers' musings. No, the really bad stuff, the stuff that leaves your jaw hanging slackly and your eyeballs popping from your skull, is that produced by people who know full well that they're writing for a huge audience and yet have no grasp whatsoever on even the slightest bit of writing skill. Fair warning - in this post, bold links are not really safe for work. Or for anyone with any taste or sensitivities whatsoever. To start us off, we have the worst piece of sci-fi/fantasy ever written (thank you once again Metafilter) - the challenge is to read the whole thing without once bursting out laughing. I failed the challenge fairly quickly (somewhere round about "he regained his statue"), but forced myself to read right to the end nonetheless. The misspellings, appalling choice of words, complete lack of characterisation and simply bizarre dialogue place it as a classic.

If you're not sure how best to write something obscenely bad, you needn't look further than FanFiction.net. The idea of fanfic isn't too ridiculous in itself (and yes, I have written some myself, so I don't claim any moral superiority on those grounds) - but it's more the scale of these people's efforts. At the time of writing, for example, there are 291,323 pieces of Harry Potter-themed fanfic, 11,759 based around Pirates of the Caribbean, 6,710 on Power Rangers (now there's a nostalgic moment for you) and 15 on SkiFree. Yes, that SkiFree. There is very little that does not make a suitable subject for the denizens of this site.

Most of the particularly amazing bits I think I'll leave for you to find for yourselves, given that most of them are probably written by teenagers and it seems a little harsh to mock them directly. People who include themes such as slashfic, though, deserve absolutely everything they get. So, if you can bear it, have a read of some romantic relationships between Rusty and Linus from Ocean's Eleven, Clarice Starling and Hannibal Lecter, Catherine and Sara from CSI, and, I kid you not, most of the major characters from The Muppet Show and Harry Potter. Then, of course, there's the poetry. Oh, the poetry. Again, most of it is just ill-advised, but if you're going to shamelessly plagiarise Shelley and change the words "west wind" to "West Wing", once again I have absolutely no sympathy. And, of course, we just have to include the poems giving the innermost thoughts of most of the characters in Beauty and the Beast. Including Philip the horse. No, really.

No post about bad writing would be complete without a mention of Mills and Boon, although luckily for me someone has already written an awesome article on their complete writing style, meaning that I don't have to read any. I'll close, then, with a quick look at people who are absolutely convinced that they can write for other formats. Over at Drew's Script-O-Rama, we have people who think they can write screenplays - check out Prank Call (Word doc) for an example of how not to write what seems to be a 10-minute extremely gory horror flick. Or you can try looking at the efforts of those who can't write webcomics, or indeed just read transcripts of one of the worst TV shows to grace our screens.

That's about as much as I could bear, and I'll be very surprised if any of you made it all the way through those. Hope you weren't too traumatised. I'll leave you with the wise words of Wednesday White over on Websnark that really should have been heeded, oh so many times:

Just because someone tells you you have potential doesn't mean that you're any good yet. Have a sense of perspective.