What makes a good writer?

[moptop]

I don't think any one thing is enough. Who was it said writing was 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration?

Each one of us has different innate skills, and no doubt we envy the skills that others have, which we lack. Personally, I find it easy to use words and, from the feedback I have had over time, my writing is emotional and evocative. I find it quite easy to come up with an interesting initial idea, but I find it very, very difficult to turn that initial inspiration into a full story.

Others, I know, come up with full detailed, complex plots, and find it intensely difficult to create realistic characters, or to use words to describe atmosphere effectively and so engage the audience.

Writing what you know is a good intial precept - but even that seems to me to be only a starting point: I believe your story and your characters take on a life of their own, and your imagination has to complete the areas that you cannot fill in from your own personal experience.

So - you need the lot, and the bits that don't come naturally, you just have to work at.

[Clevernick]

I don't think any one thing is enough. Who was it said writing was 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration?

Each one of us has different innate skills, and no doubt we envy the skills that others have, which we lack. Personally, I find it easy to use words and, from the feedback I have had over time, my writing is emotional and evocative. I find it quite easy to come up with an interesting initial idea, but I find it very, very difficult to turn that initial inspiration into a full story.

Others, I know, come up with full detailed, complex plots, and find it intensely difficult to create realistic characters, or to use words to describe atmosphere effectively and so engage the audience.

So - you need the lot, and the bits that don't come naturally, you just have to work at.

I like this one -- especially since as a voracious reader, I have noticed that even among my favorite professional authors, some of these skills are weak in each of them! In each case, they use their proficiency at the others to engage me anyway.

For example, in SF, Asimov cannot write character or interesting dialogue. Niven's characters are less than two-dimensional. But their ideas make it all worthwhile.

Meanwhile Sturgeon has few memorable ideas but can write engaging character and his empathy is very high, making him great to read and re-read.

So along with Moptop's wisdom I'd add -- if you're really good at some of these things, write to your strengths and you'll build enough of a fan base to give you time to work on your weaknesses -- or make them irrelevant!

[Mad Lews]

I like this one -- especially since as a voracious reader, I have noticed that even among my favorite professional authors, some of these skills are weak in each of them! In each case, they use their proficiency at the others to engage me anyway.

For example, in SF, Asimov cannot write character or interesting dialogue. Niven's characters are less than two-dimensional. But their ideas make it all worthwhile.

Meanwhile Sturgeon has few memorable ideas but can write engaging character and his empathy is very high, making him great to read and re-read.

So along with Moptop's wisdom I'd add -- if you're really good at some of these things, write to your strengths and you'll build enough of a fan base to give you time to work on your weaknesses -- or make them irrelevant!

Just don't tell me Heinlien's characters would have felt most at home in a forties comic book. Many of his pets became three dimensional eventually; honest.
As a fiction writer one must learn to lie convincingly.

[TomOfSweden]

As a fiction writer one must learn to lie convincingly.

I've heard that one too. I don't buy it. I can't lie convincingly for shit. If I just make it up it sucks. I always have to describe a real person in a real situation I remember but change things like size or scope. Minor things, but which of course can have major implications.

[Mad Lews]

I always have to describe a real person in a real situation I remember but change things like size or scope. Minor things, but which of course can have major implications.

And this is not a convincing lie, hung on the bones of experience? This is some fundamental truth that I missed?

I'll buy that one.

Mad

[Clevernick]

Just don't tell me Heinlien's characters would have felt most at home in a forties comic book. Many of his pets became three dimensional eventually; honest.

I think Heinlein's character (singular) was strong, convincing, and fascinating. The fact that the entire dramatis personae of his complete oeuvre was played by that same character, over and over, in drag, age makeup, and blackface where necessary, is just another fascinating tidbit. Oh, nearly forgot the other character: a strawman "bad guy" who pops up once in a while, having all the character of a broom with a face painted on it and a black hat perched atop. But he doesn't count.

If you doubt this assessment, re-read "The Number of the Beast", which should confirm it nicely for you.

And even with all that said, I re-read Heinlein with pleasure just to get more into the head of that one character, Admiral Lazarus Valentine Podkayne Stone Smith.

[Mad Lews]

I think Heinlein's character (singular) was strong, convincing, and fascinating. The fact that the entire dramatis personae of his complete oeuvre was played by that same character, over and over, in drag, age makeup, and blackface where necessary, is just another fascinating tidbit. Oh, nearly forgot the other character: a strawman "bad guy" who pops up once in a while, having all the character of a broom with a face painted on it and a black hat perched atop. But he doesn't count.

If you doubt this assessment, re-read "The Number of the Beast", which should confirm it nicely for you.

And even with all that said, I re-read Heinlein with pleasure just to get more into the head of that one character, Admiral Lazarus Valentine Podkayne Stone Smith.

Michael Valentine Smith... a very nuanced form of the singular character you see. Unlike you I think many of the versions of Heinlien's 'character/s' were overblown and less than convincing. and I was reading them as a wide eyed child of the fifties.

[Chuckdom19]

I have to agree with Storm and Simonelocke, among several others: I rather strongly believe that a good author must be able to walk around in the character's shoes. He/she may not *like* the character, but you have to understand them.

That may be the hardest of all the characteristics of a good writer.