Some woudl say the Harry Potter books are a sign of excellent story telling, but horrible writing, and are a huge commercial success. Being what they are, do you think they will live in our schools generations to come?

While other books are very well written, but the story telling lacks. They can stay on the classics list long after we are dust, but if released today would have trouble on the NY Times best seller list.

So with this in mind, which is better, to be a good story teller and an okay writer, or a solid writer with a sliver of the story teller poking out?

Who have you read that has mastered both? How can we improve our skills in those areas? I know people can learn to write better by taking classes, but can you do that for story telling to, or is that a natural ability that can just be matured but not taught?

It is also difficult to compare today's publishing market for unknown and struggling authors with past markets because everything is so different. Even ten years ago, even though the Internet existed, it didn't have near the impact it has today. Also, many of the print magazines for genre fiction are disappearing, while more and more people seem to want to write.

Below is a link to an article on openings and getting out of the slush pile that is relevant to this thread, as well as giving you an idea of what kind of stories and openings you will need. It is only from one slush editor from Realms Of Fantasy, but well worth the time to study and read.

Writing is just one element of many, such as pace, clarity, captivating setting, fresh idea, characterization, plot plausibility, narritive voice, ect...

Personally, I've found pace and clarity to be the hardest. Not to mention plot plausibility--the reason one of my stories didn't place in the WOTF finals.

I believe characters drive stories and stories are expressed through writing. So while all are essential, I, as a reader, connect to the characters to follow their stories. A smooth well-written medium is preferable, but I will gladly suffer through bad writing if the story is good enough.

Can you give me a couple of examples, please. Point them out in the books page and line and a couple of words where the example starts or something? I have all the books in hardback.

Grammar -- errors, not deliberate ones, I take it, for emphasis or character.

Q: Are there other writers in your family?

A: Before I answer this question, I must first explain to you the difference between "writers" and "storytellers." To most people, these are the same thing. To someone who was raised surrounded by a family full of one or the other, there's a difference. Uncle Remus, the Brothers Grimm, Shakespeare, and Neil Gaiman (you have not read Anansi Boys until you've listened to the Lenny Henry audio) are storytellers. Charles Dickens, Tom Piccirilli, Steven Savile, and Jonathan Carroll are all writers.

I am half French and half Greek; both sides of me are steeped in oral tradition. My mother is exceptionally fond of jumping to conclusions. We call that her "making up stories." My father is the family historian. He can talk for hours at the dinner table (Greeks are all about dinner and talking) about all the things his uncles and aunts and mother and father did when they were kids. He's also a consummate teller of jokes -- my little sister is second only to him in that arena. But my little sister is always the one who says, "He tells it wrong. Let me tell it." If you've ever said that, chances are you are a storyteller.

It was a long time before I realized that the reason I didn't get good grades in English class was because I had been raised a storyteller, and not a writer. So since I could tell a story as easily as breathing, I concentrated on writing. I wrote and wrote and wrote until I could write like I spoke, until someone reading my words was able to hear my character's voice in their head. Dialogue was easy. Exposition was hard. "Showing not telling" was virtually impossible. Sometimes it still is.

But I kept reading, and I kept writing. I learned vocabulary -- and different languages -- so that I could have a myriad ways to express myself. I wrote poetry, so I could sum up a situation or a thought or a feeling in as few words as possible. I wrote longhand on legal pads until I learned to write on a computer (I still can't touch type, but I don't mind). I wrote stories and poems and plays and television scripts and book reviews and birthday cards -- I tried my hand at a little bit of everything.

OSC's Boot Camp would definitely be another way to help improve your writing. Any writer could do a lot worse than be taught by a master storyteller and artist like OSC. There's also things like Clarion and Oddesey, if you can get in and afford the time.

If you can't afford to go to one of these workshops, then I suggest reading OSC's books Character and Viewpoint, and How To Write Science Fiction And Fantasy as a start. There's other threads on this site pointing to other great writing books too. Just search for them.

That said, Alethea's 100 percent correct when she says that the answer is to write, and write often. You can read anything and everything and go to workshop after workshop, but there is no substitute for just putting your butt in the chair and writing.

However, I think everyone has different ideas about what is included in each term. I think some might even feel that Writing includes Storytelling.

My feel is that Writing is the line-by-line details, use of tense, punctuation, conjunctions and so forth. It is also the paragraph level of how information is handled, active vs. passive, showing vs. telling, etc. And Storytelling is the story-wide stuff, like Plot, Structure, Character, Pacing, Openings and Closings.

The publishing world, I think, has more examples of bad writing than bad storytelling. Both do have some amazing representatives, though. I don't think either should be neglected.

Good writing shines: everything is tight, no excess, descriptions that sparkle without taking up too much space, no trite phrases, and so forth.

Good Storytelling shines, too: no scene could be cut, nothing meanders, characters are vibrant and original, pacing is just right, the beginning grabs, the end satisfies, information is given at the right time, twists and surprises and red herrings are all appropriate, tension builds, characters grow, etc.

That's all my impression of the difference, though. And like I said, some would look at my list and just call it all Writing.

I feel that if a story grabs you, makes you wait in anticipation for the next book, buy the next book on the first day it's out, stay up all night reading it, etc. It's probably due to the Storytelling more than the Writing. That may or may not indicate that Storytelling is more valuable.

I feel I should note that the exact circumstances of "good writing" will change over time based on how the language and the culture changes. Some old "classics" couldn't get published today for the simple reason that the "good writing" it originally had is now not the norm. Forget Jane Austin, try sending the Iliad around to publishers! Not many books are in hexameter anymore. This is even with the wonderful hook in the very first line: "RAGE! Sing Goddesses of Achilles' Rage!"

Thus they aren't able to be studied intensively for 3-4 weeks and then left alone.

Harry Potter in my opinion will only be as studied as say LOTR.

I think it is the yarn that makes the cloth after all. In reference you can look at the Alvin Maker series. The grammar did not fill the standards of modern English, but it fit the story and it was a good story to be told.

So now it brings up that difficult issue of defining the difference between a writer and a story teller. I think the writing part is the mechanics and the story telling is the delivery. I think having a combination of these make you an author.

If I had to favor one or the other I would stress the story telling. The rest can be handled by an editor if you get noticed.
In essence words on paper do not make a story, its the telling that makes it.

I look at writing as diction, sentence structure, grammer choices, punctuation choices, tense, POV, those kind of things.

I see storytelling as building characters (with needs/desires), setting/millieu, conflict, action, resolution and tying them all together.

She'll never win awards (though this last one might from what I've heard) but I bet she's crying all the way to the bank.

If you're a new or wannabe writer, and want to get paid for your work (at least more than a token magazine subscription or something) you have to be good at both. (With all due respect to a select few publications out there who are trying hard to establish themselves [waves to Beth], many non-paying publications just aren't as scrutinizing as the premium markets, nor do they garner the same amount of respect when they appear on your resume. But that's another issue entirely.)

Once you've established yourself, with a loyal audience, you can do whatever you want. You can suck raw eggs as long as your books (or short stories) keep selling to the public. Rowling is proof positive of that. You see it in many other authors as well.

The high and mighty attitude is that you will forever strive to improve your craft as a writer--and some certainly do. Patricial McKillip is one that springs to mind. her first novel, The Riddlemaster of Hed, was not NEARLY as well written as her later books--my absolute favorite being The Tower at Stony Wood.

The friend said she thought J.K. was simply at the right place at the right time and that it was fortunate for her that "the lightning struck" when and where it did.

I groused that I'd wear a lightning rod and run about in thunderstorms if I could invite the lightning to strike me like it did her.

Totally nonwriting friend asked, isn't that pretty much what we writers do when we continue to submit our work, one rejection after another?

Edit: Seriously, I'm trying to figure out if that was sarcasm or if you've never heard of a little award called the Hugo, supposedly prestigious, that Ms. Rowling has indeed won.

Check the 2001 Hugo winner list if you don't believe me.

Edit: Her winning the Hugo caused quite a furor since many people felt that the award was totally unjustified considering the faults in her writing and plotting. I think had it been in a YA category there would have been many fewer objections. Giving it to her when many very highly respected authors have never received it caused at least some of the current resentment toward her in the writer community, in my opinion. It would have been like giving an equivalent award to Gone with the Wind which made a ton of money in its day, but no matter how much money it made was never a work that a lot of people considered of literary merit.

[This message has been edited by JeanneT (edited July 27, 2007).]

What I noticed is that many people seem to care a lot about her characters. From that I have drawn the conclusion that she may be good at characterization. Well, I don't find her characters all that appealing, but obviously a lot of people do. So she must be doing something right there.

Some people praise her world buiding. While I do think she manages to put in some amusing and interesting bits, such as the moving photos and vomit flavored candy, I didn't feel like her world building had a lot of depth.

I'm now sitting here trying to decide if characterization is a writing or a storytelling skill. I'm really not sure which it is. I suppose I never distinguished between the two skills, so I'm not sure.

Edit: I assure you I didn't intend it as a put-down for not remembering. I make it a point to read the winners if at all possible, just as an educational endeavor to know what is happening in the genre so I tend to remember who wins. Most people don't and what difference does it make?

Edit: I disagree that Rowling's books will ever be generally studied in literature classes. Now you will occasionally find a "Bad Great Literature" class that studies popular literature such as Gone with the Wind, but it takes more than being popular--which she certainly is--to make a work into great literature worthy of study. She might make her way into a class in YA literature or a class studying genre though.

I personally don't hate Rowling. I just don't enjoy her writing much. I am too bothered by her plot holes and inconsistencies, as well as her rather pedestrian use of language to enjoy her work. That doesn't make me hate her.

Writing is what gives it form, and great writing tied in with the storytelling to enhance those emotions with structure. It is hard for me to find an analogy that fits and really does the story telling justice though.

But that is obviously my own thinking on the subject. I won't insist on it by any means.

Edit: You seem to me to be missing the fact that how we say something in a story is what conveys that flow and feeling. Oops. I said I wouldn't argue my point, but I wanted to explain a bit futher my own thinking.

For me the wild essence is expressing the feeling. I can't do that without words--which is the writing. The difference is as basic as do I say "he walked" or "he strode" or "he dashed." That is language which you would put down as the less important writing. I say it is essential to the feeling of the piece and what it conveys. I'm stopping now. And I apologize.

Carry on.

Thus characterization is in part in the connotations not denotations.

If in dialog i have character say "I consider myself a Reagan conservative" you give the reader have one image. but if I were to follow that up with "Liar. You're a Neo-Con." This introduces both a different side of the character as well as a perfect "crucible" as Jame N. Frey would call it.

I agree that most is in connotation, but I don't follow the "not said" part. How I would definte connotation is that it is the "understood meaning" as opposed to the "book definition" of a word of phrase.

Writing in one sense is simply committing information to a page. I gave the examples of a TIVO instruction manual, a math text, earlier in this post, I think. There's tons of excellent writing out there without a drop of story in it, and tons of story-free mediocre writing.

The way I'm looking at it, once you cross the line and start trying to write a story, you've crossed over into the storytelling regime. Writing in a way that enhances a reader's experience of a story I consider a storytelling skill. In the end, if a story is good people will read it, and the writer has done his/her job.

Here's an anectdote. The Modern Library Association voted Ulysses the best English Language novel, but more than half the voters who voted for Ulysses never read the whole book (ref. Oakley Hall, How Fiction Works, IIRC). I surveyed many such lists and Ulysses always showed up in the top 10 novels. It's a case where apparently the writing is brilliant, but the story is mediocre at best, so relatively very few people bother to read it. (I haven't read much of it it yet, but I recently got a copy and put it in the cue for sometime after Harry Potter).

One the other side of the coin you have someone like JKR that has absolutely delighted millions and millions of people with her stories while having people say writing is substandard.

To me it is clear what is more important--it's the storytelling if your goal is to bring enjoyment to large groups of people and/or make lots of money.

Bad hair day--sheesh, sorry about all the edits

[This message has been edited by dee_boncci (edited July 27, 2007).]

[This message has been edited by dee_boncci (edited July 27, 2007).]

[This message has been edited by dee_boncci (edited July 27, 2007).]

I think everyone could agree that grammar, punctuation, spelling, paragraphing all belong on the "writing" side of the argument. And, we'd probably all agree that plot belongs on the "storytelling" side.

Then are the obvious elements -- setting, character, characterization, scenes -- that can be argued as belonging to either or to both sides.

But the actual stringing together of words, sentences, paragraphs into story (the "writing")is left out of the argument.

I think it is writing that polishes the story telling. It adds to it, but with out the story telling you get an instruction manual.

If people say Rowling is a good storyteller but a poor writer, what are they criticizing? I don't see her books as full of grammatical errors. Nor punctuation and spelling errors. Where's she failing?

The stringing together of words would in my opinion fall a bit more on the writing side (diction and style).

But the divide is subjective, which, as you point out before, is the difficulty of this discussion.

I don't know what people find so bad about her writing. She does break some of the sacred cow rules like using adverbs in dialogue tags. Mostly, I think her unprecedented success aggravates some people. In terms of comparing her to the "greats" it would depend on who/which are considered greats. If you are referring to those revered by the literary elites, the biggest difference is she is writing primarily for young readers.

You can describe a character -- he was tall with blonde hair and thick wrists. The coat he wore had torn sleeves. His shoes were highly polished.

Can we agree that that's pretty poor writing?

Good story telling could be that the details of the description are more interesting but the words used to relay them are pretty much the same as the poor writing above.

His head brushed the doorway and left dry blonde hairs in the wet paint. He kept massaging his thick wrists. The coat he wore had knife cuts down the sleeves. His shoes gleamed with black polish still wet.

In general: "Once" is not an active first word. Avoid genunds: "penetrated" instead of "penetrating". State the positive rather than the negative: "Why had..." instead of "Why hadn't..." Avoid participles: "brushed" instead of "had brushed". Avoid words that add nothing: "between" instead of "right between". Break all of these rules if you have a good reason, but know the reason.