Story vs. Writing

[Spider]

Sorry if this thread has been posted before, but if it's somewhere out there I couldn't find it.

I know both the story and the way it's written is important, but if you had to pick one above the other, which would it be and why?

 

[skip.knox]

The way it's written. I can think of examples of books I've read where the author's voice carried me (examples: Gabriel Garcia Marquez, or Saul Bellow) where I just didn't care much about the plot. I can think of no examples of where the plot was so brilliant that it carried me past poor writing. The closest I can think of is someone like Arthur C. Clarke, where the writing is dry and the characters are cardboard, but the concepts were so thrilling that I was carried along. But the writing was nevertheless good. It was unobtrusive, which requires no small skill in itself. Genuinely weak writing, though, will cause a KindleClose quick as lightning.

I was all done, then I saw you asked the Teacher Question: ... and why.

Why does weak writing trump weak plot? The best I can do is to illustrate by analogy. Think of a song. It can be a trite song, but if the phrasing is good, the mix is good, the musicianship is professional, then at worst it's just another pop song and it troubles not my ears. But let the lead guitar be clumsy, let the horn section hit wrong notes, and I'm taken out of the groove at once. You'll never hear this on a record (old school), but you can hear it by going out to any of the self-publish music sites. One wrong note will jar. Let those wrong notes pile up and you can't even make it to the end of the song.

So it is with novels. It can be anything from misspellings to poor word choice to anachronisms to wooden dialog to Tom Swiftys, if they start piling up, I'm so distracted I am no longer engaged in the plot.

FWIW, I don't believe a poor writer can come up with a good plot anyway. There is a close correlation between the ability to think clearly and the ability to write well. Those who cannot think clearly, cannot plot well. I cannot think of an exception, in fifty years of reading novels.

 

[BWFoster78]

When discussing story versus technique, I find it hard to categorize some of the elements. For example: your story and writing are going to be dreadfully dull if you have no tension. Is adding tension a technique element or a story element? To me, it's kinda both.

This hardship with definition is one of the difficulties in generating intelligent discussion of this topic.

That said, it's hard not to say that both are extremely important. If you can't engage me enough with your technique, I'm never going to get to your story. If you engage me but don't give me any true story, I'm going to be left disappointed.

 

[Steerpike]

I agree it is a combination of the two. If I had to go with one, I'd go with writing. A lot of great stories end up being very simple or straightforward when you boil them down, but good writers are able to make them work. I give up on quite a few books that seem to have interesting story lines, but where the writing just isn't engaging. This is especially true with the more generic, lifeless writing I see on the shelves these days. I'm not really interested in it, no matter what the story is. I want to find writers with unique, engaging voices that they use to tell a story. If you can do that, you stand a much better chance of keeping me reading than someone who comes up with great story ideas but has flat, uninteresting writing.

 

[brokethepoint]

I have always thought of writing as the ability to use correct grammar and the ability to tell a story is to draw a reader in and have them experience something.

As an example, speech tags are grammatically correct. It is if and how you use them that is part of story telling.

I said as I kicked back and took another sip of tea.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

You know, I think Broke nailed it there. It's technical vs. art. Writing is HOW you do it, and there is a right or wrong way. Story is WHAT you do with it, and there is where we enter the quantum foam - all the rules get fun and strange.

 

[BWFoster78]

I have always thought of writing as the ability to use correct grammar and the ability to tell a story is to draw a reader in and have them experience something.

As an example, speech tags are grammatically correct. It is if and how you use them that is part of story telling.

I said as I kicked back and took another sip of tea.

My view of writing tends to be more complex. For example, the decision to show instead of tell is, to me, one of technique, not story, and that's a much more complicated subject than grammatical correctness.

I consider story to consist of decisions of character and plot and overarching concerns. Is your protagonist a 22 year old female who teaches karate or an 80 year old man who loves watching Oprah? Story. Is the significant situation the discovery of a body or trying to determine if a potential significant other likes you? Story. Is that scene significant enough or necessary enough to include in the book or should it be cut? Story.

Writing, on the other hand, I define as the way you choose to relate the story, ranging from sentence structure to adverb use to the aforementioned showing vs. telling.

So, if your story lacks tension, it could be a technique problem - you need to make the protagonist's goal more obvious and increase the opposition. It could also be a story problem - you should have chosen a different scene in which to relate the information you wish to convey.

 

[Alexandra]

I know both the story and the way it's written is important, but if you had to pick one above the other, which would it be and why?

Writing over story, every time, no hesitation. Good writing has saved many a bad story but a good story never saves bad writing.

 

[BWFoster78]

Writing over story, every time, no hesitation. Good writing has saved many a bad story but a good story never saves bad writing.

True enough (and I'm not arguing otherwise), but don't you hate it when you get to the end of a well-written book and discover there was not "there" there, that it just made no impact on you at all?

 

[Philip Overby]

This is a toss-up for me. On one hand, I think writing in a technically good way doesn't necessarily make you a great writer. I always compare good writing to good guitar players. There are tons of awesomely proficient guitar players in the world. But when you hear Jimi Hendrix or Eddie Van Halen play, they have that "sound" you can't describe. You just know it's them. For writing/storytelling, there needs to be a real blend. If your writing has the ever elusive strong voice, then that can carry your story a long way.

There is such thing as good writing that doesn't go anywhere. I'll agree that stories need tension, conflict, resolution, etc. If a good writer doesn't know how to do those things, then the story isn't connecting the way it should.

For me, Gene Wolfe is a brilliant writer. However, due to his verbose style, I've found it difficult to get into his work thus far. On the other hand, someone like David Gemmell for instance is good writer, but his storytelling is easier to connect with for me. Maybe my opinion will change one day, but I'd rather read a great story told by a good writer than a good story told by a great writer. My belief is that both Wolfe and Gemmell are excellent writers, it's just they're aiming at two different audiences. I think Gemmell's work is more accessible, therefore easier to read, therefore is easier to convey the story, therefore I finish the book, and therefore I buy more of his books.

Therefore, story>writing with a very, very, very slight edge.

 

[wordwalker]

FWIW, I don't believe a poor writer can come up with a good plot anyway. There is a close correlation between the ability to think clearly and the ability to write well. Those who cannot think clearly, cannot plot well. I cannot think of an exception, in fifty years of reading novels.

I'd say this is key.

To put it another way, the real reason for asking if plot might be more important than technique could be, is it better to take more time to be sure the plot's perfect or to give that time to the hard work of getting it written out right? Except, the best ways to get that better plot are Inspiration (meaning luck plus the judgment to know the muse was having a good day), or else:

Legend has it a mechanic once submitted an itemized bill of:

• One tap with a hammer-- $1.
• Twenty years learning where to tap-- $99.

The "writing" part of writing is where the main payoff is, and the hard work. It's also the best way to get to a place where the "easier" choices come out right too.

 

[Alexandra]

... don't you hate it when you get to the end of a well-written book and discover there was not "there" there, that it just made no impact on you at all?

Yes, but fortunately I've been able to avoid that unfortunate circumstance since reading Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles. Interview with the Vampire was brilliant, The Vampire Lestat was bearable (just), the subsequent books were utterly awful–I mean throw the book across the room in disgust awful. I'm a little more careful with my choices now.

 

[Spider]

I believe the story is more important, but only slightly. Like skip.knox said, a poor writer probably couldn’t come up with a good plot. That being said, if we’re comparing one writer with a better plot and one with better writing, we aren’t talking about any poor writers. I personally would read the book that has the better story and interests me more, because I would assume the writing isn’t bad at all.

I'd rather read a great story told by a good writer than a good story told by a great writer.

Agreed.

 

[Steerpike]

I disagree that a poor writer can't develop a good plot. In fact, I've seen it happen.

Clear thinking may be a prerequisite of good writing, but it does not therefore follow that all clear thinkers are good writers. Maybe all good writers are clear thinkers, I don't know, but I don't believe the converse to be true.

 

[Sandor]

Hi!

Being a "non-professional" writer aside, I'm a musician too and this discussion is a costant cliché in music too. Tecnique vs. Emotion, is the same thing in different words. It's the eternal war between "Being" and "Appearing", "Good Box" or "Good Present".

It may seems stupid, but as always, truth's in the middle. You can't creat great melodies with no idea of general rules; at the same time, you can't create great stuff with no emotion. There are exeptions, yes: people with a very little tecnique still being able to creat wonderful songs (Bruce Springsteen, Sigur Ros, etc.) and people with limited empathy still able to do nice stuff (Yngwie Malmsteen, Periphery, etc.).

But if you spend some time listening to some great albums, you'll find that, especially in genres where tecnique is important as everything else, they all came out from minds with a little bit of everything in it (Opeth, Tool, Ludovico Einaudi).

In writing, we have the same result: Martin (my spiritual master and favourite writer) is not a monster in originality nor in writing (is an "info dump" victim, change basic writing rules with no criterias), but still an involving writer, capable to compensate originality with tecnique and vice versa.

Another writer that comes to mind is Gene Wolfe: I've read the first three books of the "New Sun" and I'm managing to finishing it one day or another...that's not my style, but it has some good personality and I guess a lot of "hidden" tecqnique, but still it's not the perfect writer: he combines some odd choices (odd here stays for "original way to put common things") and some "intellectual" parts to create his unique voice. You won't find a totally compelling story, you won't find an awesome tecnique, but you'll find a great saga to read.

The truth is that we spend a lot of time following a platonic perfection that has NOTHING to do with REAL art: you can read all existing WRITING or PLAYING manuals, but you'll never be able to write anything special with no emotion; then, you can't write anything if you have no idea of punctuation rules.

My 2 cents
Cheers.

 

[Alexandra]

When I say good writing trumps good story tis important to realize that I'm not talking about writing technique—properly dotting the 'Is' and crossing the 'Ts'—I'm talking about the quality of writing that elevates it from a mode of communication to an art form, the kind of writing that tugs at your heart strings, makes you laugh out loud, or makes you so upset you find yourself talking (or screaming) to the characters in the book. The kind of writing that makes you sleep with the light on, or forgo sleep altogether.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is a fine example of what I'm talking about. The story is very small and simple, the writing is fabulous, and the book became a classic of modern American literature—deservedly so.

 

[BWFoster78]

To put it another way, the real reason for asking if plot might be more important than technique could be, is it better to take more time to be sure the plot's perfect or to give that time to the hard work of getting it written out right?

If you look at it from the perspective of is it best to spend your time learning techinique or learning plotting, I'd break it down like this:

1. Work on technique until you become competent enough hold a reader's attention. Nobody will read your story if you can't engage them, and story is intuitive enough that you probably already grasp at least the basics.
2. After attaining that competency, concentrate on how to tell stories until you can produce an emotional reaction with your story. Once you can engage a reader, the success of your work depends on the reader's reaction when he puts the book down. Will he proclaim to his friends that it is awesome or will he go, "Meh?"
3. Spend the rest of your life mastering each.

 

[Steerpike]

The general idea here is kind of what I get at when I talk about storytelling v. writing. It's a hazy distinction in some ways because the two overlap, but I think it is an important one nonetheless. A great storyteller can get by with mediocre technical proficiency. Someone with great technical skills but who can't tell a story isn't going to be successful.

Perfect example, which I've mentioned numerous times, is Twilight. Writing is competent, but mediocre. Similar stories had been told before by writers who were much more proficient, technically, than Meyer. But Meyer his the jackpot, and the reason is that she told her story extremely effectively, particularly with respect to the target audience. It's down to deciding how to present the scenes, the characters, the emotion, and the dramatic events of the story. You could do all of these things in the same way with numerous different styles of writing and varying levels of technical proficiency, and if the effectiveness of the storytelling were preserved the story would still succeed.

After a few years of not being interested in books at all, my daughter at around 13 went through those books non-stop, sitting in bed with a flashlight rather than going to sleep. It's something I hadn't seen out of her before or since. If you can figure out how to develop your storytelling to that level, you stand a good chance of being successful whether or not your technical abilities have all kinds of flaws that people in writing forums can pick apart.

So if it comes down to one or the other (which is shouldn't, but let's say it does hypothetically), go with storytelling over technical proficiency every time.

 

[Fantasy Writer]

I created a story world, "The Orb." But the first novel, "A Myth for the Reality Challenged," only contained the parts of that world that fit the story line. Later, I came along and created a 15k prequel that told the events that launched the first novel. (It's a promotional piece I'm trying to figure out how to publish for free. Amazon wants me to charge $2.99 for it.)

So, the story is all the stuff that makes your world. The writing of it consists of only those elements that are germane to your current plot. If you fill in all that other stuff in an authorial aside it will be BORING.

 

[Xaysai]

I think it has to be writing every time.

I feel like writing is the tool we use to build a story, and if you don't have the proper tools, you can't build it.

It would be like trying to build a house with a toolbox of full of kitchen utensils, or trying to cook a four course meal with hammers and screwdrivers.