Quote:
Originally Posted by Elfwreck
I'm not sure that's true. Among the technical skills that might not be part of a very popular story are "ability to make it relevant to readers 20 years from now, who don't know today's pop culture."
A good author can make a current-events story still read as current in half a century; a poor author may only be able to entertain people who already share a huge body of knowledge with that author.
While basic spelling/punctuation/grammar issues can drive anyone out of an otherwise-good story, technical skills in other areas (plot/ characterization/ fact accuracy/ descriptions/ pacing/ consistency of tone) might be horribly lacking (well, probably not *all* of them), and the story still be very popular because the readers are all capable of "filling in the blanks" themselves.
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I think that's true to a certain extent, but that act of filling in the blanks (at least, to my mind) is only seamless if the gaps are small. The worse the writing is from a technical standpoint, the harder it will be for someone paying attention to be able to fill in the blanks.
One can read
War of the Worlds and still buy it as a story, even though it's a hundred years old and most of the science in it (at least, about Mars) doesn't hold up. You can do that, though (at least, I think) because nothing jumps out at you and says, "Hey, wait a minute. That shouldn't be there...". Wells didn't find a way to make it current so much as he made us not care that it's dated. People who don't care about vampires recognize
Dracula as a good book because it's engaging writing. In 10 years, no one's going to remember the
Twilight books because the writing's disposable. Even teenage girls won't be reading it. At a minimum, they'll be reading some
other vampire novels about pale, James Dean-wannabe-looking guys and shy, awkward teenage girls.
To put it as succinctly as I can: I think the difference between popular writing and good writing is telling a good story vs. telling a story well. You can tell a good story badly and still make boatloads of cash on it, which I think is the answer I'd give to the topic question.