Epiphany

LloydBrown said:

I just had a minor epiphany while reading Uncle Jim’s line-by-line of the latest salvage attempt from the LAG.



It’s the story that matters. And the telling of the story.



You can fix pacing, grammar, POV, spelling, internal consistency, and all that stuff if you have a good story. If you don’t have a compelling story, or you tell it in a terrible style, then nobody cares about that stuff anyway.

I know it's basic, and it sounds intuitive to people who already know it.

Click to expand...

Pace is impirtant, grammar and POV are important, language matters, and all sorts of things are important, but, yes, in the end, story and characters are what matter most, simply because it's story and characters that readers are looking for and remember. Though I would say you have to master the tools in order to tell the story well. I don't believe a compelling story is separate from pace, grammar, POV, mood, tone, etc.

I'm not sure you can tell a compelling story and then fix pace, grammar, moord, tone, etc., later. Until these things are right, you don't really have a compelling story.

I also think a really good writer can tell a compelling story about lunch with a friend, or a broomstick, for that matter.

Style I'm not so sure about. There are more than a few bestselling writers who are not very good stylists, and that's being kind.

But, yes, on teh whole, story and characters are the most important part fo fiction, and of the two, I believe character outweighs story. People remember characters for generations, but story and plot are often forgotten.

I agree, as long as you have a great story, most of the rest is fixable. I'm sad to say that you don't even have to have memorable characters for a book to do well, look at the DaVinci Code, for example. However, that's not what I'm striving for in my writing, I'd like it to be good all around.