How not to write

What happens when a writer's on crack and goes overboard to write a bloated article that means zippo? You get these types of articles, like the film review of "Sarkar Raj" written by a bloke who thinks he's the illegitimate, "Machiavellan" grandchild of Shakespeare.

I've been a big fan of Amitabh Bachchan since his Sholay days, but the author is the real star of this article. So tragic, yet so funny, I couldn't help but rip this article. Here were my thoughts as I read it. Enjoy.

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-> Dark, sinister, sinewy and rugged - “Sarkar Raj” is Shakespeare on cocaine. Or the lacerated life of a Thackeray-like family with the concept of spatial harmony becoming meaningless because of the disembodied camera movements.

Incorrect usage of lacerated as a verb. It reflects as a noun. Poorly conjugated. And hello, writer, this is you on cocaine, not Shakespeare. The Shakespearean sentence means crap, cut.

Ram Gopal Varma just doesn’t let the characters be. In “Sarkar”, he observed, studied and pondered on the compelling contexts of political powerplay in the Nagare family.

Studied is an adjective, and if it was meant to be a verb, too many overlapping verbs. Also, illegal construction, contexts is not a legit plural. Reconstruct the sentence. Combine observed, studied and pondered to one verb.

Here he drags the uneasy relationship between patriarch Subhash Nagare (Amitabh Bachchan) and his son (Abhishek) into an arena of exacerbated emotions.

Sentence is in present tense, exacerbated is in past tense. The past participle makes the "emotions" verb irregular. Emotions could read emotion. Look at it closely, the complete sentence means garbage. Cut.

Amar Mohile’s background score doesn’t help the cause. Every discernible space in the soundtrack is saturated with tempestuous sounds straight out of a B-grade horror movie.

Pointless adjectives. Cut. Replace "out of" with "from."

In contrast, the three main characters maintain a poise and serenity that defiantly move in a direction opposed to the one Varma has chosen to take this time.

Move who and what in what direction? Please specify. Then correct the sentence, define "a poise and serenity" as singular or plural nouns (depending on what the reader is trying to reflect, or remove "a") and change move to moves to reflect present tense.

This is an angry film about an angry young man and his uneasily-calm father who define and demonstrate power in different ways.

No hyphen after uneasily. Infact, never use a hyphen after words that end with ly.

“Sarkar Raj” could have been what Coppola’s “Godfather 2″ was to “The Godfather”. Instead, Varma shrouds the characters’ grief and angst in a cryptic chaos.

"A cryptic chaos?" What the f***? Cryptic chaos.

-> What compounds the sense of claustrophobia is that every frame looks cramped.

Now I'm really getting pissed. Bad, absolutely bad construction. Every cramped frame compounds the sense of claustrophobia. (or claustrophic sense).

-> Dilip Prabhawalkar, who played Gandhi in “Lage Raho Munnabhai”, is a machiavellan rural icon here.

Machiavellan? Wrong, it's spelled Machiavellian. Sentence means nothing, cut. I bow to you, oh Shakespeare on crack.

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And it goes on and on, more and more garbage sentences that torture intelligence. In fact, the article is one giant piece of garbage.

Then comes the question: "Oh, so you think you are a great writer to criticize others?" Granted, I'm not a great writer, I can be especially inconsistent with grammar, but I know my limits and operate within them. And yes, my work is massively ripped before getting published in the New York Times, for example. It never feels good because it exposes my weaknesses.

This was an example of a writer going overboard, trying to achieve what he really can't. So he's trying to show off. His grammar, verb usage, tense, sentence construction, adjectives, everything calls for help. If you can't get enough of him, let me know. I'll post his name.