Bad

Bad girl.
Bad dog.
Big Bad Leroy Brown.
Bad News Bears.
Michael Jackson was Bad.
Bad writing.

There we go...

Bad writing. OK, kids. Here we go. As a teacher of Creative Writing, it is excruciatingly difficult for me to "grade" work. It's entirely too easy for someone to say "What's with this grade? It's CREATIVE!! How can it be wrong?!?!" Good question.

In art, there are techniques to learn and if those techniques are not executed appropriately, the final product is genuinely wrong. Same for music. There are chords that work and chords that don't and if they don't, the final product is, again, genuinely wrong. While there are techniques for writing, some of the "rules" are so ambiguous it's hard to draw the line between right and wrong. I can say that I've read some writing that was so horrendous, I felt like I lost IQ points after reading it.

How is a reader to know, though? Where is the line that divides the brilliant from the beastly? The genius from the gibberish? Consider if you will the uniquely burdensome position in which I am placed every time I have to grade a piece of writing. In my opinions and on my shoulders rest the grades of my students. I'd like to think I'm a good judge. It's rare that I toot my own trumpet - usually I'm my own worst enemy - but I am confident about my writing resume' and my ability to sift through the debris and find the nuggets worth keeping.

Writing with no coherence between characters, plot, and setting = BAD.

Writing made up of a string of disconnected sentences = BAD.

Writing dialogue that sounds less natural than daytime soaps = BAD.

Writing a lot of words that essentially say nothing = BAD.

Writing that contains foul language just to try to get away with it = BAD.

When I am grading student work, I ask myself these questions continuously. It's rare that I will place something in the truly BAD category, but if I do, it is not done lightly.