After almost a quarter century of studying and attempting writing of various forms - fiction, nonfiction, poetry as well as a lifetime of reading fiction and non-fiction, I've come to the place where I've concluded that the most important aspect of fiction writing and telling a story is the narration. It's not characters or character development or 'fully-fleshed out' characters, it's not plot or description or any of the dozens of things that gets discussed in writing classes and writing instruction books. Yes those things matter, they are very useful but the real bottom line is HOW the author tells the story, now engaging it is, the manner and style in which it is presented ... in other words the narration, the author/narrators voice. Any of the other elements can be all but left out or minimized if the writer can tell a story (I'm agreeing with the O.P.) here and saying that the ability to tell a story is narration.
That's what I believe and I'm sticking to it!
