Britain's Literary Review awarded its 2010 "Bad Sex in Fiction" prize to Rowan Somerville's The Shape of Her, which includes such passages as

"Like a lepidopterist mounting a rough-skinned insect with a too blunt pin, he screwed himself into her."

I can certainly understand that award!

Authors tread a fine line, I think, between being just too descriptive with stupid little similes, analogies, etc. on the one hand, but on the other of having exquisite descriptions. Shu read to me a piece from a book he was reading, and the descriptive language was all encompassing and ridiculous. Novice/amateur authors seem to think those adjectives/adverbs are essential.

Novice/amateur authors seem to think those adjectives/adverbs are essential.

Adjectives and adverbs exist for a reason. In that sense, they are essential. Bad writing tends to throw ill-suited qualifiers into the mix for humorous results. Same with similes and metaphors. It would be interesting to crunch the numbers on some great, some good, and some awful texts and see what the ratio of adjectives and adverbs to nouns and verbs is.

Yes, it would. I bet the worse writing has a higher number of adjectives and adverbs, but I could be (and have been!) wrong.