Random Musing - Language vs. Story

A friend of mine is a writer and she often sends me her stories for my opinion. The other day, after telling her my opinion about a story she had written which I loved, she commented that she felt I often got too caught up by the story to give her a clear, objective and technical analysis of her writing. I'm obsessed with reading and extremely particular about grammar and language and all of that good stuff that I paid attention to in English class, but I realised that when it comes down to it, the story is more important to me than the skill of the writer.

That being said, I hate bad or sloppy writing and I'm constantly amazed by how many university graduates I know who cannot put together a decent sentence. But as long as the writing is of a good standard, then all I need is a good story to keep me happy. In fact, I'll go as far as to say the story is the most important element of any literary work. Much like clothes and people, the writing should accentuate the story and tell it in the most fitting way possible but it should never overshadow it.

For example, one of the many criticisms levelled at 'The DaVinci Code' was that it was badly written. I didn't notice because I was way too caught up in the story. And I am so in awe of JK Rowling's imagination that I honestly cannot comment on whether the Harry Potter books are well written or not because that is the last thing on my mind as I curse the tube for being unusually reliable and getting me to my stop on time thereby forcing me to put down her latest 800 page novel. But if I were to venture a guess, I'd say she's not the only billionaire author because she 'writes really well'. Zadie Smith on the other hand, is a technically amazing writer and while 'On Beauty' did grow on me eventually, let's just say I was more than happy to get to the end. There were several amazing sentences littered throughout the book, but I never got swept away by the story or really gave a damn about any of the characters.

This is just some very random musing on my part, and bear in mind that I want to be a book editor/ maybe author/ I am obsessed with reading when you wonder who in God's name muses about stuff like this!