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dclayh comments on Do Fandoms Need Awfulness? - Less Wrong
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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.)