After having given writing a more important place in my awareness, after having gone through the editing process with a number of very good editors, and, on aoocation, some less good ones, I’ve found it more difficult to ignore the technical flaws (as I see them, because rules aside, some of it, like head hopping can be quite a bit about personal taste), just because I know more now than I did then.

And you’re absolutly right; quite often, the really good storytellers already have instinctively good writing skills, too. I guess, for me, there’s a soul to a really good story that you can’t get just by lining up all the elements and following all the rules.

Here’s why — and I say this as someone who teaches writing, does a lot of manuscript evaluations, and is probably one of the harshest critics within our genre (which is why I don’t review). If a writer can make me forget technical flaws with her storytelling, then she is one hell of a storyteller — and in the end that’s all that really matters. Everything else is just…the trappings. The heart of storytelling is to pull a reader into the story. To make the world and the characters come alive. Very few writers can do this for me, so I figure anyone who can is doing something that surpasses mechanics or whatever the current writing trends are (head-hopping for example).

I don’t think there’s ever been a dichotomy for me between the skill of a writer and how much I’ve enjoyed that writer’s work. Most of the time — for me, at least — a truly skilled storyteller is a truly skilled writer. There are a couple of exceptions — I won’t name them — who I think are technically mediocre lame but they tell such a gripping or entertaining story, I have to give them credit. Anyone who can get me to lay down that critical red pencil and just enjoy the story (enough to put these writers on my auto-buy list) is performing some potent magic and should — in my opinion — be scored accordingly.

Still, I have realized I much prefer to be entertained emotionally that awed technically, I think.

Good post, hon!

Anyways, I have sent several authors to AWH to gain tons of knowledge and I will continue to send them to AWH chatters. Maybe since everything is on the blog I can keep up better!

I am so happy that your writing career is growing by leaps and bounds every single day!