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MrHen comments on Do Fandoms Need Awfulness? - Less Wrong
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Hmm. I guess I look for different things in books than you do. I like the journey of the story. I really do not care too much about where the journey ends or starts. I like the middle. If the middle is crap in a book I will never, ever read it again. I can endure a bad beginning or a mediocre ending, but if the middle is a desert I have a hard time liking the book. If 70% "blah" leads into 30% "wow", why did I bother with the first 70%? Give me a summary of the 70% and let me read the good parts.
I suppose some of this sentiment comes from the fact that there is no good reason for any part of any book to be blah. 70% bad and 30% good is strictly worse than 70% good. There are books that exist where the entire thing is worth reading and I only have so much reading time.
Another guess at the source of this sentiment is that I actually enjoy the writing. I like good writing as much as I like a good story. I enjoy books that are about nothing in particular and have no great story to tell if they are written well. 70% bad writing is not worth 30% good story.
Of course, as I mentioned, I am not talking directly about Twilight since I have not read more than a few sentences.
I am not really talking about pace. I like slow pace if it fits.
I think people like Alicorn who enjoy books for story and plot, become annoyed at unsatisfying endings, etc., generally tend to group themselves into what's called "genre" fiction (particularly SF/F, although SF has the "cool ideas" component also), while people like you who are more attracted to good prose style and what you might call "small-scale enjoyability" tend to group into "classic" fiction.
I have this debate ("what makes a book good?") with my friends frequently, since they're mostly in Alicorn's camp and over the last decade I've drifted steadily into yours.
I agree.
I really do not think there is anything inherent in any genre that prevents good writing or good stories. I like cool ideas for stories but get really annoyed when the writing is poor. I would claim I like the story but dislike the writing.
My camp is one where bad writing trumps a good story. A bad story pushes me toward disliking a book with good writing but with a much lesser force.
My justification for this is that it is really easy to come up with a good story and really hard to write well.
For comparison, good stories hold much more weight in other mediums. Movies, in particular, have to have a good story or I will probably not watch it again.
Personally I wouldn't go so far as to say writing "trumps" story, just that they both have significant weight.
My justification is simply that good writing should be good through its entire power spectrum, from individual word choice, to a well-crafted sentence, to an engaging scene, to a meaningful overarching plot. Having one component that's excellent doesn't justify poor performance in others; everything weighs in together. (Of course, there are some authors (Dan Brown springs to mind) whose prose style is just so awful that I can't make it through even a single page, so I have no chance of appreciating the plot.)
I suppose I'm probably unique in my approach to stories because I loathe surprises (to the point where I'd rather get nothing at all on my birthday than anticipate getting something but not know what). So I tend to like re-reading more than reading for the first time, since I know what to expect. This causes me to place a high importance on endings, because if what I expect while re-reading a book (or reading it for the first time, if I've found a synopsis on the Internet) is a lousy ending, I won't enjoy the rest of it much.
Well, probably not unique, but certainly nowhere near how I approach them. As such, I doubt that you or I could ever recommend a book to each other with any useful accuracy. Good to know, I guess, if Less Wrong ever turns into a book club?