In Honor of Certain Writers...

The girl staggered. Her throat was dry and constricted, as if icy talons were clutching at her and trying to strangle the life out of her. There was a faint shriek.
The poor girl had never faced horror like this. She wished, desperately, that she could faint clean away, and so would not have to continue on in this manner.
The sight of such bad writing made her eyes burn with pain, and terror seized her. She could barely move her legs to run, and her eyes grew wider still as she read on in spite of herself.
She began to cry, and her tears were blood red. Was it actually blood, or was it a mere phantom of the horrors she was witnessing?
At last, her heart pounding in her chest, she threw the newspaper down and began convulsing violently. The poor, dry prose; the overblown and formulaic gore had done her in. Yes, it was true--Miss Celestine had been killed by bad writing.

Then, of course, the paramedics arrived, and after a nice high voltage circulated through her chest and restored the thumpity-thump to the thumper, she stood back up and began writing this post.

There is an affliction in the world of writing; an affliction which can be summed up as "crap". This is most commonly found, it appears, in thrillers or horror novels or romance novels. In other words, in 99% of novels.
I call this "Dan Brown syndrome". It is a syndrome which says that if you overlay visceral descriptions over and over (in horror novels, this involves blood, gore and fear in ridiculous quantities. You know, the kind where you actually wish that the person that's scared would just die so that we don't have to listen to the descriptions any more) you'll have a novel. There's nothing wrong with formulas per se, but they are so frequently abused that sometimes you get:

The Da Vinci Code, opening sentence: Renowned curator Jacques Saunière staggered through the vaulted archway of the museum's Grand Gallery.

Angels and Demons, opening sentence: Physicist Leonardo Vetra smelled burning flesh, and he knew it was his own.

Deception Point, opening sentences: Death, in this forsaken place, could come in countless forms. Geologist Charles Brophy had endured the savage splendor of this terrain for years, and yet nothing could prepare him for a fate as barbarous and unnatural as the one about to befall him.

...
yes. My point. It is there.
It makes me long for the days of:

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.

Is there a patron saint of writing? Chesterton, perhaps.

P.S If I ever write a novel and it sounds remotely like you-know-who, PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF HUMANITY grab a shovel and hit me over the head with it.