This year's (Cafe Doom) contest judging experience has, once again, given me new perspective and things to think about. I have entered contests often over the years and while they are run and judged differently, many of them return judges sheets to the entrant. These are usually broken down into aspects of the work and ranked on a scale of 1-5, with comments from the reader about why they gave each part the score it recieved. Maybe the next time I participate in contest judging I will use such a method. It would make the process much less overwhelming.
One of the things I saw in the nearly 60 stories I read over a week's time was how many stories were strong in one area and weak in others. We all have more ability in some aspects of our writing than others, but in many of these stories, the discrepancy was pronounced. And it's disappointing for the reader when a story with a great plot and characters is ruined by poor grammer or less than cohesive writing style. Or a story with amazing premise or imagery is overshadowed by flat characters or unrealistic dialogue.
There are few novels and stories that are awesome in all respects, but many writers are competent in most areas and stellar in others. A good writer rarely has a weakness bad enough in any aspect of their writing to negatively affect the entire work.
So, I've been wondering, in the context of "Jack of all trades and master of none", are certain writing skills more important than others? Which weaknesses are more likely to detract from a really good piece of writing? How strong does any one ability have to be to overcome flaws in other areas?
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Note: This post was partially inspired by a book I am reading, "The Name of the Wind", by Patrick Rothfuss, who as far as I can tell is skilled in many, possibly all, aspects of novel writing.
Oh, there are so many things....
ReplyDeleteFor me, the absolute worst is to try to read a story with poor grammar and punctuation. I don't just mean a missing comma here and there or an incorrectly used semicolon. I mean REALLY poor grammar. To the point where you realize the writer very likely failed English in high school and had to make it up in summer school in order to graduate and then barely squeaked by with a D-.
Another toughy for me is when the writer's thought processes aren't translating logically on the page. The writer might have an awesome, original story idea, but if they can't get it to come out of their brain, through their fingers, and onto their computer screen and read the way it looks in their head - and at least have some semblance of flow and order by draft three, they need to take a break and do a little creative writing 101 study.
Also, I LOVE believable dialogue. If it's robotic and stiff with no personality, it's torture to read. So I don't.
My strengths: Dialogue, hooks/cliffhangers, making every word count - writing lean, editing
My weaknesses: over-analyzing my ideas, over-cutting, vocabulary, going too heavy on symbolism
Hummm
ReplyDeleteWonder what Annie Lamont would have to say -