Ed, I've never tried to sell any of my work. In fact, I don't really have any work to sell. I've only recently, after years of reading everything Harold Bloom told me to, felt comfortable enough that I could put pen to paper and write fiction. I found out that I could. But I've yet to write anything that is brilliant. I'm just working on the craft. I'm not a good writer, yet. All the fiction I've written is in the early draft stage. James Thurber's wife once read a first draft of one of his stories and said, "this is high school shit". Hemingway called all first drafts "excrement". There is no rationalization here. My comments, while cynical, I think are true. The general public does prefer bad writing. That doesn't mean good writing doesn't get through.
"Maybe I'm generalizing but what's good doesn't sell. What's bad does." I actually want to take this back. Certainly a lot of good writing sells. It's easier to sell good writing. I have my bum out the window with this comment. I guess my point was that most of what sells (most of what you'll find in the genre section at your local book store) isn't good writing. But that doesn't mean there isn't a market for good writing.
Hmm. This is going to sound overly simplistic, but I think something that is well-written is something that's not badly written. It's easier, in a way, to pinpoint 'bad' writing. Bad writing, for me, always begins with grammatical mistakes, an inability to string sentences together. I'm not talking about people who do this deliberately for effect, but people who simply don't have a grounding in language skills. This kind of writing does not allow me to become immersed in the story at any level, but I'm constantly bumping along, as if I'm driving on a road full of potholes. You're hardly going to notice the passing scenery if you're focused on not dropping your transmission into the next big chasm in the road. However, I also struggle with other 'bad' writing habits—overuse of particular words, corny dialogue, inconsistent points of view. These are not grammatically incorrect, but call constant attention to themselves, and yank me out of the story. Coherence is another factor for me. If I can't follow what the heck is going on, I usually classify this as bad writing. (There are exceptions to this, of course, as some authors are deliberately obscure, to great effect.) But somebody who unconsciously bops back and forth between POVs and doesn't link scenes or make transitions clear can get me to the point where I haven't a clue what's happening. I'll soon get tired of backtracking to discover what I've 'missed' and I lose interest in the story. This person is not what I would call a good author, nor is their story 'well-written.' I would classify a well-written story as one that is free of grammatical mistakes, one that flows easily, and one I can follow. I certainly won't like reading a story that isn't well-written (by my definition above) but there are many that fulfill my definition of well-written that I still dislike. Style of writing, the content of the story itself, the plot, the pacing, the theme, the characters and the setting all play a huge part in my enjoyment. A story can be well-written but I might not personally like how the author handles these other subjective elements.
No. I went to considerable trouble in my post to differentiate between exactly the things you seem to be confusing. As I stated in my John Hawkes example, I think it is possible to have a well-written story that is dull. Dull does not mean badly written. That's why I said I make the distinction between story and quality of writing - if you don't, I say again, the term "well-written" is meaningless.
@ minstrel : 'Completely meaningless' in your opinion. According to my logic, a story that bores and fails to engage the reader has failed it's fundamental purpose. No amount of verbal gymnastics can compensate for that. An analogy comes to mind but I think I better refrain This is why I wasn't convinced by your argument, so I'll agree to disagree.
Well-written to me means the writer has conveyed the feelings and experiences of the story without bogging it down with misspellings/grammer errors, unneeded sentences and words, unnecessary characters and side plots, and other things that take the reader out of the story.
To truly establish the fact of what is 'well-written' we only need to ask 7 billion different people.
I once cracked a bad egg into a hot frying pan. Thought I was going to have to burn the house down. No one would ever want to live there again. The next day, after work, I came home and could still detect the stench. It was memorable enough that it became a comment in my third book. When the power company talks about gas leaks and the "rotten egg smell of natural gas"... I think "Are they kidding? Those two things smell NOTHING alike." Nothing. At all. A guy at work cracked one open and he said it was black inside. I bet it was horrifying. And not like natural gas
Cooking tip: if you stick a whole egg in a glass of water, it sinks if it's good and floats if it's bad. Okay, now back to writing.
Alright! Lot's of great comments guys. I can see why some people point out that it is largely subjective. Some people take a more formalist approach, judging the quality of the writing based on the employment of language, the technical dexterity and mastery displayed by providing rich detail, riveting turns of phrase, and (near)flawless SPAG. Others, meanwhile, include the content, or the story architecture as a part of the writing. Can the other carry the scenes? Can he or she set a pace? Is the subject being detailed interesting? I agree with @minstrel that there is a distinction, even if the two are related. The way I describe it--whenever I'm tempted to use writing as an umbrella term-- is that there is macro-level writing, mid-level writing, and micro-level writing. In the former, we have story, e.g., conflict, character, scene, world design, etc. This is where the writer builds the story and its "pillars," how the reader moves from beginning to middle to end. In the latter we have the elements of style, e.g., diction, syntax, sentence order, SPAG, voice, etc. Here, the writer determines the story movement, how they want readers to move from word to word and what readers will take from each. The mid-level is a little tricky, and may vary depending on how writers want to break things down. This is were we see things like tension, action, pace, tone, etc. These are things that are built by how the author works at the micro level, but must remain completely conscious of the macro-level. These are the elements that are more so produced than employed, and they create a large part of the reading experience. They carry the story, not as a blending of macro and micro, but the elements in between. That's just the way I break it down. Of course anyone could regroup them. As for the writing quality, I tend to look more at the words on the page. How do I experience the language? Where I differ from Minstrel a little is with something that @Mckk mentioned. A book might have to meet the parameters of the genre, which may have a completely different style. I think something can be a well-written thriller, romance, or mystery, without being generally well-written. Then again, that begs the question, what do I consider well written? This varies for me because I've been under the impression recently is that a well-written book, is one in which the language, he micro-level writing, doesn't call attention to itself. It is generally mute, giving itself up to tell the story. That is not to say that it's boring, it should be interesting, engaging, riveting, but exact, offering fresh, intense descriptions of what is happening or being seen in the story at any given moment. But then again, you have some great writers who truly flex their writing mastery and produce great work. Whatever the case, the best writing, à mon avis, is writing that strikes a balance between the micro-, mid- and macro-levels--that is the micro produces the right mid for what is going on in the macro. (Dos that make sense). Good writing is what the story/book need it to be, no? I will also have to agree with @jannert's line that something that "is well-written is something that's not badly written." Bad writing always calls attention to itself in the worst of ways...
The best writers are masters of language. I guess everyone has their own opinions of what the words "well written" mean. Some are saying it simply means writing that is free of grammatical errors. Okay, but what about language? And why is it wrong to suggest that some genres are full of bad writing? Because you might offend someone that reads those genres? Nabokov's "Lolita" is brilliant writing. To say it's well written is to say that the sun is hot. No one disagrees with the latter. Harry Potter is bad writing. Okay, some may disagree with that. But there was a time when Children's literature had literary merit. Since we can't argue with taste we can argue that most people just have bad taste.
My question is whether or not we are judging a book by it's own merits, and ability to effectively reach its end, i.e., achieve its goal, or are we holding up a cultural/literary yardstick judging new writing by the standards of what has come be for. Is modern/popular literature bad or just different? If there is one thing I've learned, it's that art, especially literary forms, have had phases and periods. So it is possible that some of us find certain books employ "bad writing," but then, what are we using as a comparison point for good? Different times had produced different kinds of thinkers and readers and thus some different kinds of writers. Furthermore, I find it hard for me to say something is objectively good or bad after the writing reaches a certain level.
Yeah. that tip is in my second book I had to look it up when I found a pile of my chicken's first eggs.
No, it's because you are using your liking/disliking of a particular genre to make a generalization that most likely does not hold true. I have noticed - and it's not just you but other writers as well - view genres in which they do not write or read to be somehow "lesser" genres. Much the same as Chevy owners will ridicule Fords and vice-versa. It has nothing to do with reality - it has to do with egos, or ignorance, or misconceptions, or just the fact that they don't care for that genre. So the problem with saying that certain genres are full of bad writing is that it says more about you than it does the genre.
I think genre is always under attack and never gets much credit because a lot of genre authors ( but not all ) manipulate their writing to suit the broadest audience. It feels a little sell-out - like artists who copy agreeable prints for department stores, or bubblegum pop music or carnival rides. As much as I love Joy Fielding - I could never call her well-written on the same caliber as say Mark Twain. Instead I'd call her writing tight, fast paced, a page turner. She is a well-written thriller writer and her goals are different - Mark Twain wouldn't build a character to conform to a shocking twist. Fielding would and does. But on the flip side, the so-called literary section is often as sell-out as genre, sometimes more so because they assume they're doing one better than genre when genre could be described as reality under a veil of metaphors. Which is why Cormac McCarthy and Margaret Atwood and a dozen other great writers can use it. The tweaker in modern fiction gets taken more seriously than the tweaker in a horror story because he's battling personal demons not real ones. But whose to say which is more original? Someone's post about can a book stink and still be well-written made me think of the book I'm reading right now. Not that it stinks pre-say. It's called Mary Stuart’s Ravishment Descending Time by Georgiana Peacher . It's not a conventional book - it's experimental. And I wonder if there should be exceptions for experimental. There are some amazing passages in the book others however feel clunky as sentences get lost under a deluge of multiple nouns and verbs until the reader is uncertain what is linked to what and what the actual point of the sentence is. Also, as a whole there is no decipherable plot. I’m almost half way in and I think, but I’m not sure, it’s about a child that has been born during the middle ages and follows her phantasmagorical sensations zooming back n’ forth through time. Is it well written? - yes/no. No - because I have a hard time enjoying what I cannot understand and cannot follow, and cannot connect to. And yet there’s something absolutely magical about the prose causing me to surge on. It's kinda like listening to La Traviata's Drinking song. I don't know the lyrics, I can't understand it but it draws me in. Here’s one of the more convoluted passages - Flowing flowers, caressed semen kisses convoluting pollens, dishiscence, germination, tetrads, pullulation, moors of irident heath spread round earth, covering lands, moving in synchrony with seas of waves, now calm, now breezing, now blowing until at last globe beamed enchantment in sky, lavender smile in azure world, happy terraquarium with field seas heath green pearlpuffs ellipsing sun, celeste.
I know - if anyone can decipher it let me know. Yet had she just kicked out some of the excess she could have made something brilliant and coherent not just interesting and wordy as there's some amazing sentencelets ( mini phrases ) in there. With seas of waves, now calm, now breezing, now blowing. - this has great rhythm lavender smile in azure world. - could be a good metaphor if tweaked a bit. pearlpuff clouds ellipsing sun. - good description. happy terraquarium. - interesting idea almost sci-fi-ish - aliens who think of the earth as a happy little terraquarium.
You won't notice good writing. Bad writing? You keep losing your focus on the story and being mentally interrupted.
There's a reason why genre fiction isn't studied for its literary merits. Or taken seriously in the universities. It is, for the most part, dumbing down our culture. It's lazy writing that puts no demand on the reader.Anyone who points this out is called a literary snob. I'll wear that badge proudly.
I consider this a high art vs. pop art sort of thing. They are different, but can both produce great work. I'll say it, some people are snobbish and sheltered about their definition of literature... no offense to you personally @Bartleby9 Suffice it to say I disagree.
