One thing I have always struggled with was understanding what people mean when they say something is badly written. Sure, I can grasp on some of the basic aspects that cause a particular literary work to be considered poorly written: bland characters with conflicting motivations, dialogue that feels unnatural, plot holes, abundance of overused tropes, etc. However, I do have a hard time identifying these tropes, especially bad dialogue. Maybe it is because I am an introvert weirdo who has about as much social interaction as a crippled ww1 veteran with the spanish flu, but I can only distinguish writing when it is particulary awful (the "how is your sex life?" line from The Room) or when it stands out as something wonderful (the "war backwards" passage from Slaughterhouse). I would like to know if there was a way to sharpen my perseption of writing. Otherwise, I am afraid I will become a tone-deaf idiot who thinks Dan Brown novels and crappy fantasies for lonely people like Twilight are the pinnacle of storytelling.