What makes someone a great writer? Is there some indefinable quality that all great writers have and normal people don't, or can anyone become great if they work hard enough?
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What do you think makes a great writer?
- Thread starter Buskanaka
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Vulgivagus hagiographus
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- Mar 12, 2004
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I think it's a skill that can be learned. A great writer is able to make his or her audience think, feel, see, or understand a specific something in the form of written words. Yeah, and that's about all I have to say...
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Blessed-one
a long journey ahead
um.. something to do with natural talent as well as accumulation of experience and the continuous sharpening of skill. Also, he has to be able to keep the audience attention without losing them half way.. which comes to plot and characterization, and whether in some cases, what he writes is believable or not. Should i say, whether it's too 'out' of that particular genre he writes in.
uh, but it's really difficult to say since everybody has a unique style and different books appeal to different people.
uh, but it's really difficult to say since everybody has a unique style and different books appeal to different people.
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yeah I agree it's a mix of talent and training, but it just seems like there's something special about really great writers that you can't explain why they're so good... like I've been looking really hard at my favourite writers to try and find out why they're good writers so I can try and incorporate that into my writing, but it's hard to draw out exactly why they're different to others...
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Buskanaka said:
I'm in agreement with the other replies; I think it's a combination of things and also depends on the reader and what kind of realm its in. (literature or fiction, sci-fi, fantasy etc - everybody has a different view of a great writer)
Don't look too hard at why you're favorite writers are "so good" really, because someone else can think they stink. lol. Try incorporating into your writing, your own voice - your own style. I think that is one of the mysterious keys to a great writer, they manage to put their distinctive essance into their characters and in a format that other people can relate to through those characters.
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Blessed-one
a long journey ahead
do you guys keep a notebook on writings that impact you? i tend to copy down paragraphs or sections that i really like.. and since doing this writing class i've been keeping a writing diary and that helps me a lot in really getting down to learn from various styles of writing.
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Blessed-one said:
Hmm. I know everyone does things a different way so to your question, no I don't copy down paragraphs and I never personally saw a use for it when I had enough of my own clutter. lol
I just want to point out how I see that as a 'danger' to your own writing. A lot of writer's have done this I just don't see many professionally published author's admitting it except for David Eddings.
It's the subconsciously duplicating another person's style - especially if you read too much. Or, duplicating all of their styles and then your own work is a college instead of your own work. When I was "young" in my writing that is exactly what I did, even though I never copied things down in a journal - I read the books. I had short stories or plot ideas from when I first started and when I reread them a dozen years later I think, "How in the heck did I wind up sounding like *insert author's name here* wrote this? and badly at that!
David Eddings said when he is working on a novel he will not read any other book because he doesn't want to subconsciously mimic that person's style, let alone a plot or a scene.
George RR Martin, when asked what he was currently reading - listed a few books that were not relevant to his own genre.
If the way you're doing helps you learn that's cool - but a suggestion I have is, write a daily diary of your own - take a paragraph you like that much and rewrite it using your own words and use a different emotion while writing it. That is the true essence of various writing styles, IMO and a more efficient way of getting your own narrative voice and style.
This applies to non-fiction writing as well. If you're clipping articles because you're interested in journalism - rewrite the story with a shorter word length or make it longer, or write it like you're angry or excited, etc.
just a thought
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Blessed-one
a long journey ahead
good point. That does have the potential of 'style copying' i guess, but i suppose it wouldn't hurt for beginners. After all, without reading there's no writing.
that bit about rewriting things in a different emotions.. i've only tried it once (being not too familiar with writing exercise techniques out there), and it was hard! well, good exercise as you said.. i'll try that more.
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I don't lookat favourite writers and try to copy them, rather I try to look for generic things that I like about their style and try to incorporate that into my own. Because really, no one exists in a vacuum and any writer is going to be influenced by other people.Lucubratus said:
And anyway, what's wrong with having a similar style to a great writer? I'm pretty sure no one is going to get a book published if only 1 person in the whole world likes them...
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Vulgivagus hagiographus
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I try not to focus so much on my particular "style." I try to write whatever is necessary for the story.
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artybloke
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Buskanaka said:
They read widely and deeply. Both what they ought to read and what they ought not to read. They are not neccessarily great human beings, but they do have insights into the human condition.
Yes, there is a lot of hard work involved. Lots and lots. You have to be disciplined.
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Buskanaka said:
I agree that any writer is going to be influenced by other people and there's really nothing wrong with a similarity to another writer . Similarity is the key word. View writing a novel or a short story as speaking out loud. Even though we all speak the same words and in varied regions - the same dialect, there is always someone 'differen't - even if they have the same accent and use the same slangs. The voice - the phonics,the one, subtly different. It's hard to explain...lol. Just say for example, some actors that have a unique voice - like comedian Caroline Rhea. Say you wanted to be a comedian and you admired her the most. Are you going to try to get your voice to match too? It's almost impossible - but if you tried to do just that and you were in a room with a bunch of other Caroline Rhea fans - they might want to laugh you off the stage. That's basically the only analogy I can use - a lot of new writers make the mistake of copying another style too much.
Oh, and there have been some author's that became published because only one person (the editor) liked them. Stephen King comes to mind.
There have been some other author's now "famous" who were rejected over 20 times and more before ONE person liked the book and banked that other people would.
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Blessed-one said:good point. That does have the potential of 'style copying' i guess, but i suppose it wouldn't hurt for beginners. After all, without reading there's no writing.
that bit about rewriting things in a different emotions.. i've only tried it once (being not too familiar with writing exercise techniques out there), and it was hard! well, good exercise as you said.. i'll try that more.
It is hard.
I guess re-writing someone else's work, the parts you like the most may assist in paragraph organization or some other technicality like structure, etc - but I never have copied down other people's works. *shrugs* The writing course I took waayyy back, spoke of reading it of course, and asking yourself how they wrote and writing down your own notes about it. If having to write it all down works better for somebody, then that's for them.
I have a friend who is a writer, too - and we were collaborating one time - had to do all of this through the mail, and one day she sent me a tone of story scenes and some ideas for another tale. I wrote back and asked her if she had been watching the movie Willow - because her character's dialog sounded like Bavmorda and her hero's personality was too similar to Madmartigan.
She wrote back all embarrassed and said she HAD watched the movie about 3 months before she came up with these "new ideas".
It's just a Caveat I wanted to mention to any new writer's, that's all.
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