Story vs writing skill

[sonicalh9]

I'm curious about what is more important when writing a novel.
Will the readers focus more on the story plot or is the writing skill from the writer more important?
Can a novel succeed when writing a good (bad) story but with bad (good) writing?

What are your opinions?

[Colours_dont_match]

I'd say writing style, because you can have a somewhat boring or overused plot, but write it interesting. I don't know how many stories I read about person A liking Person B, but there were misunderstandings, so they took lots of time to get together or find common ground.
It's nothing special, written several thousand times already, but it can be made super special when it's written right.
If it has an interesting, unexpected plot, it just adds as a bonus.

[Kelheor]

Will the readers focus more on the story plot or is the writing skill from the writer more important?

Both.. also really depends on the reader But I'd personally say it's worse when you think the story is good, but it's hard to read because the writer lacks skills, than when it's not a great story with amazing storytelling. Because if the storytelling is good, you can nitpick the plot, but you will finish the whole story. When it's a lack of writing skill, you will drag through the bad writing trying to get some good parts, but it will make you weary.
But that's a personal opinion, I know people that would disagree with me for sure, had this discussion just a few months ago

[Kaydreamer]

Writing skill. A skilled writer can make a story about a trip to the corner shop to buy eggs an unmissable, immersive read with the right turns of phrase. But no amount of cool plot can redeem bad writing for me.

Regardless of how good the idea for a story may be, if the execution is botched, it'll be a horrible reading experience. A good writer makes the words on the page just flow and disappear, so the reader can see the scene and feel the emotions behind the ink on the page. Bad writing, spelling, grammatical errors and such knock the reader out of the story constantly. It's unenjoyable to slog through.

Besides, in my experience, badly written prose tends to go hand in hand with shallow storytelling and two-dimensional characters. Likely because many writers still struggling with the basics of writing are either young, or haven't read very broadly. Someone who reads broadly and plentifully will pick up good grammar and writing tricks through years of exposure to good literature. (The exception here is ESL authors, who have an understandable reason to struggle with written English.)

[ninjashira]

For me to read anything, it absolutely needs both.

A good story with bad writing, I honestly can't muscle through. If there are continuity errors or grammar issues or just bad prose and disconnected story points... I will stop reading, end of story.

A bad story with good writing is just boring as hell. It may be the most beautiful prose in the universe, but if the story is uninteresting and I don't care about the characters, why would I keep reading? I'm not so infatuated with the written word that I would read it just for the sake of reading beautiful words (if I was, I would read poetry). I'm in it for the story and the characters.

The two skills of story crafting and prose writing absolutely need to be developed together in order for an author to write a book that I want to read.

[surenlicious]

Writing skill. I can handle all kinds of corny stories but if the writing is done poorly you...you just can sit that one out. Same for the other way around, you can have a wonderful story but bad writing is just undoable. D:

[DesiredUsernameTaken]

It's different for everyone--for me, the answer is definitely story!

No one is going to sell me on good writing alone, because you're trying to barter for my time and my emotions, and I've come to value both a lot more than I used to. You've got to give me more than your version of purple prose. I'm not going to remember your writing more than I remember your story. I need something to respond to and interact with. I can just imagine trying to talk about it with someone.

"Did you read that book?"
"Yeah! The writing was beautiful. I felt like I was reading poetry."
"Yeah, definitely! The writing was really good..."
"..."
crickets because there's nothing else to comment on

---

The answer changes a bit though, depending on 2 things:

1) what exactly you're defining as "story" here. Many who aren't sure exactly what the point of the Literary genre is would say that Literary fiction never has any "story", and plot is synonymous to them. Literary books have a story; the characters are the story. There's also a plot, but it's a fairly subtle one, as characters take focus and center in Literary.

And 2) what exactly you're defining as "writing" here. I tend to think of writing as our word choices, the structure of our sentences, our grammar, etc. Others will include the structure of the story.

If we're talking about the structure of the story, then both story and writing are equal because a perfect structure with a boring story won't be remembered, nor will a perfect story with awful structure be understood or leave an impact in most ways.

[Donley]

Both are important but, in my opinion, good writing can save a cliche plot, but a fantastic, original storyline doesn't matter if the writing's too painful to read.

(Of course, they're both a continuum and you need at least a base level of both to make a readable book, but for me, writing skill is more important than story)

[BOMB]

I think it's 50/50. Without one, the other won't be enough in my opinion.

[rajillustration]

IMO if it's written well enough, the skill becomes the story. Books can get pretty abstract about if story really needs to be there. Kind of like how art doesn't need to be of anything subjective at all. Kinda depends what you're looking for, and if you find yourself in a story-less novel or short story, like that is kind of the point. Personally I've enjoyed both, but only if it's written well.

[SleepingPoppy]

It doesn't matter how good the ideas in your head are if you can't communicate them.

The longer answer is that it's about the sum of the parts. It's called "storytelling" because it's the marriage of the story and the telling that create the meaningful experience for the reader. This is true for any media, not just writing, of course! I think it's also go to be aware that it's not really as straight forward as "good or bad" for either the story or the writing. Both story and writing can be farther broken down into many components with the creator being better at some things than others.

[Moctemma]

As SleepingPoppy already said, it's about storytelling. A good storyteller can make people interested in any story. But if the story is bad, people will stop listening/reading.
I'd say it's more important to have the skills to tell a story than the story itself because a good story in the "wrong" hands will fail. Movies are a perfect example of this; many awesome stories that already succeeded as books fail because they couldn't tell the story effectively.

[SleepingPoppy]

I was thinking about adaptations when I was writing my response! The ability to adapt a story to the particular medium is it's own artform/skill! XD

[cherrystark]

I will say both but only if "talent" is included under the writing skill umbrella. I love reading fairytale adaptations, but the problem is that the stories tend to feel "recycled". I've read countless Cinderella adaptations where the MC is abused by her stepfamily only to be rescued by the prince. But in "Ella Enchanted", the author turns the familiar story on its ear and creates an entirely unique premise on a classic tale. I watched a modern adaptation of "Pride and Prejudice" that wasn't the best written script, but it nails female friendships and the pressures of finding love as an adult.

It's a balancing act.

[sonicalh9]

I see that the majority chose writing over story skills (or 50/50).

I have a question for everyone who prefers writing skills: 'beside spelling and grammar, what elements (dialogues, structure, word choices, detailed descriptions or to the point,...) do you see as (very) important when writing or reading a story, and why?'

[Bokyongyo]

Writing skill.

It's 2021 and honestly no plot or story is completely original but what is original on most cases, when it comes to a good writer, is how they execute that narrative and plot in a unique way.

Maybe its how the characters talk to one another, maybe its how the plot progresses; whatever it is, writing helps excel a seemingly simple story to something more and that takes skill.

[djourner]

A good story is icing on the cake, it is cool to look at and if done well can be impressive as hell. But at the end of the day, the quality of a book is measured by it's mushy soft interior and the flavor of the creamy filling... Not the icing by itself.

It is worth noting first that those things carry different value depending on the media. When we are dealing with comic books, operas or tv shows, there are many more moving parts to it, those are instances where the writing is actually the icing and the visuals and presentation are the filling... For instance I care very little for the plot of naruto, but the fights look impressively detailed and well animated, and just because I want to catch EVEN MORE FLAK, JOJO is an example of how an art carries the whole manga on it's shoulders with a very... eh... plot.

On a novel however, these things are entwineed, the quality of writing IS BOTH THE FILLING AND THE ICING, a simple cake that takes a lot to balance properly.
Here is an easy way to show you... Pick you favorite book, any one.... Now remove pretty much every character stylization, take all scenery descriptions and replace them with their most basic, and write it in the most accurate formal language you can... And now, you know what makes your favorite book interesting right?
A good story is just an idea, and ideas without execution are pretty damn useless in the grand scheme of things... Not saying you cannot have a stellar epiphany of the greatest story every told, but for a novel to suceed you to have the words to MAKE IT stellar.

Now what makes for 'writting skill' varies...
Writing is an art form there are many things you can learn about it and improve, a movie maker would learn 'shot composition' while you as a novelist learn 'scening', a traditional artist learns 'anatomy' like you would learn how to describe movement.

Generally speaking, descriptions are a pretty damn good starting point for any writer, trying to narrate the same scene multiple times using different words to stimulate different senses and invoke different feelings on the reader.

Next i'd say story structure, learn to create the 'Rube goldberg' machine that connects your plot together. Wether you want to plan the muder from the start and then write around it, or you want to just find out along your characters how the muder took place is what makes of breaks a plot.

The flair added in to make it better, it is the thing we call characterization, but do not underestimate the value of it, characterization is what keeps characters consistant and their personas matching the world they live in... Remember it is fantasy for us but real for them, so sure you think dragons are cool, but if they burn down the MCs village and he is just fine with them, that's sort of... Off...

Finally stylization, learn different vocabularies, regionalism, some psychology might also help, and try and make things more unique, like a painter carefully selecting each color on the pallet thinking ahead to carefully match them.

Other details are exclusively up to you, but remember, each part of this process ADDS ON to the previous, none of these is enough to carry a story by themselves, so the more steps you add the more you have to keep track off.

[ISNEKO]

I don't imagine you'd get anywhere without some amount of both.

What if it's the most interesting plot you've ever read, but it reads like shit because the author can't grasp basic grammar or flow or transitions are terrible or they just bounce back and forth all the time or they don't know how to split sentences when they're obviously going on for too long without giving the reader a chance for breath?

What if the person is an expert in the above, but their fucking story is dumb?

[Ordinaryaverageguy]

I suspect a really great yarn can survive a less than sterling writing style & a really good story-teller can make an everyday event rather riveting. So, I'm not sure one can state categorically that one is more important than the other.

[likhoradka]

Having both good plot and writing skills is preferable, but if I have to choose one: writing skills. I've been disappointed too many times by being lured in by a summary and promises of something that's right up my alley, only to have the story handled and delivered in amazingly bad ways. There will be constant grammar and spelling errors, stiff dialogue, and an inability to maintain their own characterization. Or the prose are written in such a way that you can instantly imagine them being read out loud for children's storytime in an obnoxious voice.