Of course it can. It's fine to credit nurture, but it's naive to ignore nature. What one doesn't have by nature doesn't mean one can't make up for with nurture.
@GingerCoffee Your new sig is extremely distracting. Wizard of Calladan what????? See how you've derailed the thread?
Sigh... argue all you want, but if you want me to concede your point you're going to at least have to have a look at those 23 'famous' child authors and show how none of them wrote masterpieces. Because it looks to me like I provided evidence of my position and you as yet have not. Didn't Mozart compose masterpieces as a child? That answer would be, yes.
I believe that Malcolm Gladwell, in Outliers, states that Mozart didn't compose masterpieces as a child. He did work beyond his years, but his world-class, century-spanning work didn't happen in his childhood. Now, there may be those who disagree, and it should be noted that this conclusion fits with Gladwell's thesis in his book. But it does match my previous impressions--that Mozart was mindbogglingly talented for a child, as a child, but his childhood work didn't transcend other people's adult work.
I can certainly agree that Rimbaud, Percy Shelley, and Pope are good, but I wouldn't consider their earlier works masterpieces. Of course, that's just my opinion, and I also admit I haven't read their entire body of work to make a fully informed decision. None of the works of anyone else on that list, however, have ever been mentioned by any of the authors/committees I admire, so as far as I'm concerned, they aren't masterpieces.
I wonder... if experience is so important, how can someone who's essentially lived their lives in front of a computer write a fantasy story with exciting sword fights, magic, and dragons and get it published? Okay, that example is an exaggeration, but you can't deny that there are so many published, even best-selling authors who have made their name by writing action-heavy fantasy/sci-fi/whatever without ever riding a horse, lifting a sword, firing a single round, much less stepping into a martial arts gym. I mean the kind of people who gain their "experience" mostly through the internet and books without ever really experiencing any of the things they write about like violence, drinking/drugs, or even sex. Yet they write about those things compellingly enough to build a following, gain dedicated fans, and suck them into their imaginary world. And all that without experiencing the central things they write about. Now, don't get me wrong: I believe in "method writing." I truly believe experiencing almost everything you write about first-hand does help me to write about them. I'm willing to try even uncomfortable, sometimes even dangerous things just to be able to write about them better, so yeah, I do value experience a great deal, but... from what I've seen, experience is in no way a prerequisite to effective writing. I mean, I don't think we can or even should write off all the "non-athletic" action authors out there as bad writers simply because they lack experience. Clearly they have gained the skill to write about sword fights, shootouts, horseback riding etc. but without actually experiencing any of it. So they've done a lot of research which pretty much falls under education (educating yourself). The same goes if we talk about being experienced as a writer, i.e. someone who's written a lot: that, too, falls pretty much under education since learning to write well is about educating yourself about the ins and outs of writing fiction. When I approach the matter from this direction, experience is something I value greatly and seek actively, but I don't see it as all that essential of a component of effective writing. Personally I just prefer to experience the things I write about or at least things as close to them as possible. I mean, I can't really go out and cut someone down with a sword, so I take up historical European swordsmanship, for example. To use a music an example again: There are millions of people who think Kurt Cobain/Iggy Pop/The Ramones are/were incredibly talented while there are millions of people who think their music has nothing to do with talent unless it's a talent to suck. And there are millions of people who think Joe Satriani/Steve Vai/John Petrucci are incredibly talented while there are millions of people who think they have zero talent, that their "music" is just plain technical, self-indulging wankery. And there are millions of people who think Charlie Parker/Duke Ellington/Dizzy Gillespie were incredibly talented while there are millions of people who think they are just plain boring if they even know/care their music exists. So which of those musicians are talented, which are merely skilled, which have neither skill nor talent, and which have both? How can you tell?
When I think of experience, I don't think so literally. I think more in terms of experience in living, of being around people, observing life's quirks, etc. I don't think one needs to experience everything or even most of what one writes about (that's the old "write what you know" extreme), but I do think one has to have seen how people act/react to various situations, and then be able to use that in other situations in their writing.
@shadowwalker, I do agree. It's just that I've known people who have very little IRL human contact; they mostly communicate online, but they still manage to write pretty convincingly. And then we have authors from the pre-internet era like Emily Brontë, who wrote a book people are still reading today even though, when she wrote it, she had very little life experience, very little contact to the outside world etc. so is "life experience" really all that essential for writing effective fiction? I do think it is important, but essential...? Probably not as much as some of the other things discussed in this thread.
Prince is without question a super talent. He can easily hit all sorts of notes ,is ranks like top 30 guitarist in rolling stone magazine, writes great lyrics for himself and for other artists and he can do it all live. Ultimately, there's only so many hours in a life time. Don't expect me to believe that that Prince just worked THATuch harder than everyone else.
Like others have already said, to me talent means there's that "something" in a person which makes them inclined to be good at thing X. It just has to be nurtured for that person to master their craft. Of course sometimes it's very difficult to explain where that talent comes from, like how barely a 10-year-old kid can write stunning poetry. However, it's unlikely the likes of her will ever touch as many people with her poetry as the likes of Yeats, Eliot, or Whitman unless that talent is nurtured and her skills honed. By the way, Giorgio Vasari, a painter/biographer from the 16th century seems to have affected the Western thought of talent. He tried to explain the genius of the great artists of his time with made up stories about their childhoods, how they already as kids showed great skill and created masterpieces. That is not to say some kids aren't mindbogglingly skilled, but when there's a skilled person people like to look for explanations and reasons for those skills from their childhood and make false connections (Hakkarainen, Lonka, Lipponen 2004).
Maybe what we're talking about is more the 'Human experience'. You can't do much in any art without that.
What about imagination? You can't write a bestseller fantasy series without imagination. I actually started writing because I have been told more than once to knock it off, relax your wild imagination. And then I thought what the hell, might as well try how writing suits me. And now, here I am, one year and a half later... I daresay that out of all four initial traits, education is the least important for writing (at least the ones Mans stated - education in academies, schools - unless you study creative writing). But on the other hand, no one will publish your novel if comma always stands in the wrong place. As for writing per se, you can learn it yourself, you just have to be certain this is the path you want to take and you must be prepared to sacrifice some of your free time to read how-to-write books and also to, well...write. I agree with posts such as this, life experiences are important for writing. For example, how can you write a good sex scene if you're a virgin? This is a very banal example, but you get what I mean. This is also in sport, not just art. Every talented athlete in the national team has been working damn hard to stand in the stadium and listen to his country's anthem. And many talented authors with bestsellers have been writing for ages before their work has been accepted and published.
Ergo it must be true. Okay, yeah, Prince is a great musician, but hardly among even the top 100 guitarists of all time. Then again, here we come to the stupidity of ranking art: who's the better guitarist, Keith Richards or Eric Johnson? There's absolutely no question Johnson blows Richards away when it comes to pure technical skill, but since music isn't a race... does Richards really have more soul, feel, whatever than Johnson? Or is it just two greats you can't really compare because it's a matter of taste? Hell, some even rank Cobain as one of the most influential guitarists of all time and, in a way, they are even right even though everyone and her dog know he sucked technically. Yes, Prince is probably talented, but I've always seen him as a songwriter, singer, and a performer, a kind of jack of all trades, not as a guitarist. The other things he just does really well, clearly on a professional level, but e.g. I don't really see him among the true guitar greats. As for whether he's talented in every aspect of what he does... how can we know? I have no idea how many hours he clocked in the practice room (although from what I've heard/read, Prince was a diligent woodshedder) with whatever instrument, so I can't tell if e.g. his guitar chops are the result of little practice and lots of talent or a ton of practice and little to no talent? Honestly, I can't hear it in his playing, whether it's talent or skill. Maybe I don't have the ear to tell the two apart or something. I just know his music doesn't speak to me even though it speaks to so many others. I'd rather listen to the solos of George Harrison, John McLaughlin, Larry Lalonde, Dave Fiuczynski, Arthur Adams, and Karl Sanders to name but a few. They aren't necessarily even better or worse than plenty of others, their styles just cater to my particular taste, and even so if you asked me to rank them when it came to talent, I couldn't because I have no idea how they got to be as good as they are (and they're good in such different ways, e.g. compare Harrison to Sanders). Can you tell which guys on that list are talented and which are merely skilled?
Yeah. Although, a friend of mine is a virgin (at 26, yeah, don't ask) and she wrote pretty raunchy slash. I mean, she's not a gay guy and she's a virgin, and it was still pretty convincing! But the one and only sex scene I wrote before getting to do it irl... Oh god. Terrible and deluded. I agree. E.g. a swimmer can be tall and have huge hands and legs ("talent"), but they'll take him/her only so far. A petite Chinese with impeccable technique can beat them. My brother used to be a national level runner and also coached a European Champion in long-distance running and it was friggin diligent work. He and his coachee are both talented in the sense that they have just the bodies to be excellent runners, but the willingness to work hard and make sacrifices combined with a lot of luck will take you to the top. Not talent. This may not directly translate to writing, but wherever there's a lot of competition, the harder you gotta work to become good enough to make it.
How can anyone write a convincing murder unless they've murdered? Experience is one thing - translation however is the key. A murderer might write a less convincing murder scene that a sweet little old lady whose major kills were done by fly swatter. If she can better tap into her emotions and translate them, she can surpass the man with experience.
@peachalulu, that's what I try to do. I can't shoot people, but I can shoot at cardboard targets and then do my best to translate that into the scene I'm writing. Or taking what I can from boxing class into a fight scene in my WIP etc. And, of course, tons of research (which, I think, also falls under education) is a part of the equation: watching/reading interviews, biographies (also auto), documentaries etc. about the subject you're writing about (e.g. in this example's context, serial killers, murderers, gang members etc), and so on, and combining all that with your own "experience."
@peachalulu, excellent point! I write science fiction about people on bizarre planets. How do I get that experience? It's not possible. I have to use my imagination, and my imagination only. Tolkien never met an orc, let alone fought an army of them. Larry Niven never saw a Ringworld, yet he wrote successful novels about it. H.G. Wells never used a time machine to travel to the far future, yet he wrote a classic about doing just that. Experience can only take you so far. At some point, your imagination is all you have to go on.
In the end, I think all this talk of talent and judging if someone has it or not is all a little pointless. In the end, if the book has touched you, then it did something, the author managed something, and to you, it would always be one of your favourite, perhaps more incredible books. Maybe it moved you, maybe it was an eye-opener, maybe it gave you a perspective that changed the way you saw something forever, maybe it released you from stress or pain or whatever's going on in life and the book made you laugh when nothing else could. And if a book did any of these things in any combination, then that's all that matters really. That makes a special book, and if it's special to you, then well, that's the end of it, isn't it? People rave about Shakespeare but I struggle to understand its incredibly old English and the stories themselves are fairly simple - it doesn't matter to me that he's a literary genius. If his stories don't touch me, I don't care about them. But if we really want to judge whether someone is talented or not - I guess if the person has stood the test of time and still it resonates with people and make them think, then I'd say that writer probably has talent. But here's the thing - we're really talking about the ideas behind the book rather than the craft of writing, I feel. Because beautiful writing, whilst worthy of admiration, would never resonate or be relevant to anyone. It's the ideas behind it that matter - the words are just the architecture, the scaffolding that gives it shape and therefore being. Now, can you be talented with ideas? Can you learn to craft good ideas and recognise them when you see one? I wonder...
One doesn't really have to engage people to learn about them. Observation plus imagination, not to mention using one's own feelings, desires, dreams... You don't have to have done something, or even done something close to that something, in order to write about it convincingly. I hate flying and would never, in a million years, even consider parachuting. But I guarantee I could write a believable character who loves parachuting and describe how he feels when he's free-falling. As to virgins not being able to write sex scenes - baloney. Research gives them the facts. Then it's just a matter of translating feelings they've had in other experiences into the scene, as peachalulu said. And quite frankly, after reading sex scenes from non-virgins, I'd say it definitely has no bearing on believability.
