Chris Nicholson's Writing Weblog
June 08, 2006 • Thursday
OK, here's another one (I would have saved my previous post for today had I known this redundancy would occur):
In a reader poll conducted by Britain's The Book Magazine, J.K. Rowling has been voted the "greatest living British writer." (See BBC News' article, "Rowling tops book magazine poll.")
This begs the classic question: To be a good writer, is content more important than craft? Is it better to write a great story than to produce great prose?
Rowling is by no means a prose hack (in fact, you can see her compositional dexterity improve over the course of the Harry Potter series — the fourth book, in particular, shows a notable change in the economy and creativity of her word choice). But the Potter books are certainly more focused on strong character and setting, and less focused on wordsmithing.
So, which is more important, substance or skill? To be a commercially successful author in the modern age, the former. To snootily consider yourself a "serious" writer, the latter. To be truly great? Both.
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