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What makes a good writer?
8 years ago
General
Here's a question for everyone (just for curiosities sake). What do you think makes a great writer? When you read do you expect to see an expansive vocabulary or do you like it simple? What do you expect when reading about characters?
For me, I have to be an emotional writer and let that reflect in my work; when you read my characters you can feel their experiences as if they were your own. It took me a long time to learn how to do this and sometimes that makes me critical of others if I don't feel that in their work but I think that has made me a great writer because I expect so much. I did the same with my art because I believe you can either do it or you can't; there are basic things in any kind of art that you can't learn and if you can't do them then you can't be a true artist in my eyes. Of course that is my personal (and professional) opinion.
Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader - not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon. - E. L. Doctorow
For me, I have to be an emotional writer and let that reflect in my work; when you read my characters you can feel their experiences as if they were your own. It took me a long time to learn how to do this and sometimes that makes me critical of others if I don't feel that in their work but I think that has made me a great writer because I expect so much. I did the same with my art because I believe you can either do it or you can't; there are basic things in any kind of art that you can't learn and if you can't do them then you can't be a true artist in my eyes. Of course that is my personal (and professional) opinion.
Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader - not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon. - E. L. Doctorow
This talent requires a writer or artist to study and learn what makes their readers/viewers respond in the various myriad emotional ways that human beings can. That is the key to causing a reader or viewer to experience a work of fiction before them.
Learning to accurately write or draw to record what WE the writer or artist has imagined or experience is not as important to an author or artist who wishes to be successful as it is to learn how and what causes the emotions of their the readers or viewers to respond.
Making this all the more difficult is discovering that not all the people in your audience will have the same "emotional triggers" to what you put before them as you the Writer or Artist do.
When I drop a comment on someone’s journal it is generally because I have already spent time thinking about the journal’s subject, so the journal’s author and I are sharing a common interest. If I can offer a different point of view on the subject, then hopefully the journal author and I can both benefit. Isn’t that the whole point of public journals?
Be well and stay happy.
As to me commenting on your future postings, I am looking forward to reading them.