The Qualities of a Good Writer: What are They Doing that You're Not? Part 2

In part one we covered the first quality of good writers that I have surmised from my years of editing fiction. I told you how important it was that you take your craft as serious as you would any other career path.

This time, I want to share the second quality great writers appear to have in common: An ability to balance creativity with an analytical mindset.

Here's the full list of what we are going to cover in this three post series, just in case you forgot. (Of course you did, look at the length of this thing. I forgot!)

The most important qualities of a good writer are:

1. Taking your craft seriously

   1. Gaining a thorough knowledge of grammar and language

   2. Dedication and discipline

   3. A love of research

   4. Attention to detail

   5. Critical thinking and problem-solving skills

   6. Good time management

2. Balancing the creative and analytical

   1. Imagination and creativity

   2. Strong observation skills

   3. Organization and structuring of complex ideas

   4. Clear, coherent, and persuasive

   5. A unique voice

3. Having the right attitude

   1. Empathy and curiosity about human nature

   2. Self-awareness

   3. Open-mindedness

   4. Adaptability and versatility

   5. Perseverance and resilience

   6. Ability to take constructive feedback

We will go into the specific work habits/skills that contribute to creating this equilibrium.

Things like cultivating creativity and exercising your imagination, strong observation skills, the organization and structure of complex ideas, the art of being clear, coherent, and persuasive, and developing a unique voice.

Qualities of a Good Writer #2—Balancing the Creative and Analytical

To be honest, I was surprised when I came up with this one, but it has a well deserved place on this list.

I brainstormed all the qualities of good writers I could think of and then looked for patterns to categorize them. This one ended up being in the top 3 (hence why it is here).

Let me explain why.

One of the most vital qualities of a good fiction writer is the ability to strike a harmonious balance between the creative and analytical aspects of their craft. It is the delicate art of marrying imagination with structure, allowing for creativity that pushes boundaries while maintaining coherence.

Because pure creativity alone isn't enough to write a good story. Great writers have the ability to craft vivid characters, settings, plots, etc. However, they also have the ability to step back from those things and use analytical processes to then mold and refine them to near perfection.

To do that, they need to be thoughtful planners, be great at organizing ideas, recognize when ideas need to go, and then communicate the end product clearly to the reader. And they do all this while staying conscious of their own artistic voice.

In the following sections, we'll explore specific things these writers do that contribute to the delicate balance between creativity and logic.

Imagination and Creativity

Ok. This might seem obvious, but for those of you who are unfortunately daft, let me tell you that creativity and a good imagination are going to be important requirements for writing fiction.

Pretty heady stuff I'm revealing here, huh?

At the heart of every exceptional writer lies a vivid imagination, a wellspring of novel (as in new) ideas. They can easily explore unconventional perspectives in their heads, and the transform the ordinary into the extraordinary.

These writers have the remarkable ability to envision alternate realities, to delve into the depths of their imagination and bring forth stories that captivate and inspire.

That's all well and good, but I'm gonna be real with you for a moment, not all writers have an innate talent for creative thinking, and many have imaginations that don't seem very...imaginative. I mention this, not to make you worry if you are one of these writers. I mention it to tell you that it's ok if you are. Because imagination can be expanded and creativity is a skill that can be learned. It's not something that you either have or don't have.

Great writers are either naturally talented this way, or have worked extra hard to make it so, and other than the people that live in your head, no one will be able to tell which kind you are.

If you would like to know the best method I have seen for building a stronger creativity muscle, go to this post here.

Strong Observation Skills

Great writers are observant of the world around them. Actually, this is probably why they seem so dang creative because they are able to add little details to their novels most people never think of.

Things that they have observed in life by paying close attention.

I can't stress how important it is for writers to write about life, real lived experiences and encounters.

Why?

When you come up with situations, characters, or anything for a book that is not tied to any real lived experience, you cannot possibly make them feel real.

It is the specific little details that make writing come alive and give your stories realism. It is also where you can take something derivative and done before and turn it into something unique and fresh. That is not to say that you have to know exactly how it feels to experience things like corporate espionage, being a crime boss, fighting aliens or romancing a centaur. But tying specific real world details to these things are what ground them and make them believable and relatable.

Good writers pay attention to the small details and they observe things about life and people that the average person might miss. I talk a bit more about this in "Be A Hoarder: How I Learned the Lesson of Being Hungry for Writing Inspiration".

Organization and structuring of complex ideas

Another way great writers show how they balance the creative and analytical aspects of writing is by being able to organize and structure the most complex ideas so that they are coherent but also impactful.

Books involve a lot of moving pieces and great writers make it look easy. They are able to take all of those pieces and put them together so that the book makes a whole greater than the sum of its parts.

Did I say that already? Anyway, even if I did, it's important.

This requires that you be two different people during the writing process:

The free flying artist that throws convention out of the window for emotion and creativity, and the mathematician who can see each number and solution within the whiteboard of equations like Russel Crow in A Beautiful Mind.

Together these two disparate personalities create some pretty incredible stories.

This brings us to the next trait that is closely related to this one.

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Clear, coherent, and persuasive

Just like the last characteristic allows writers to organize complex pieces into a whole, they are also able to communicate that whole effectively.

It shouldn't be surprising for me to tell you that a good writer is a good communicator, but it isn't just about communicating. The best writers I have worked with are deliberate in their writing, they rework everything for clarity so that their ideas come across exactly as intended.

This is actually really hard for many writers to do. You'd think that since they trade in written communication, most if not all of them would have a firm grasp of writing clearly and coherently. But this is because the idea of "clarity" is often misunderstood in fiction writing.

Most think that it means to rewrite your prose to be clearer means writing it simpler. But, and you may not agree with me, writing fiction clearly is it about writing to clarify the image you are making in the reader's head, the emotion you are evoking, and the ensuring the ideas in your head are communicated to the reader's head without to much lost in translation.

Maybe that means you remove words and phrase something simpler, but sometimes that means that you add phrasing or purposefully leave something unstated and dance around it. It depends on the story.

This is also what makes good writers so persuasive, they know that they are not telling you a story, but they are tapping into your emotions, manipulating your point of view, and more.

Their goal is to connect with the reader on a deeper, more visceral level.

If you can grab someone by their emotions, as in elicit a strong emotional response, no matter if positive or negative, you have them until you lose your grasp on it.

A Unique Voice

One of the main reasons writers lose their voice or struggle to find a writing "voice" at all is because they are constantly writing/editing it out of their work.

This is because they are not conscious of it. Now, there are many other contributors to a weak author voice like having low confidence in your writing, being too green, emulating how you think a book should read rather than just writing like you would write. But too often, I have seen authors edit out their own uniqueness. In the name of grammatical and syntactical correctness, and "clarity" (as in the clear=simple definition I gave above) that they lose all flavor. You can no longer feel them through their own words.

I don't care what other people have been telling you, removing your voice from the narrative is a bad thing.

Why, if every writer did that, fiction would begin to lose its art, and all books would begin to sound the same. Publishers would start to just push out derivative genre fiction meant only to transiently entertain and be quickly pushed aside for the next money making hit.

Why fiction would lose all nuance and purpose and meaning because it would become detached from the authors who write it...

....

I'm just gonna let that hang...

All my favorite authors and the best authors I have worked with all have a very strong voice that comes through in their writing. Their personality radiates through the pages, the reader gets to know, like, and trust them. But I'm not telling you to inject your own opinions into the story or intrude on your characters and plot.

This section is all about balance after all. They allow themselves to write the way they want to, to tell the story they want to tell, and in the way they want to tell it. They confidently embrace how they write and stop second guessing themselves.

They maintain a balance between their creativity and the concessions they are willing to make for "correctness," and they make those concessions because they have analyzed the costs and benefits of doing so and came to a decision about what is best for their book.

Summary of the #2 Quality of a Good Fiction Writer—Balancing the Creative and Analytical

In my experience, the best writers are not just the most creative, they are the most critical (not in a self-judging way, but the self-examining way). They are able to take the incredible ideas from their heads and communicate them effectively.

They pay attention to the things around them in order to add realism to their work. They are deliberate in their writing and know that creativity is not enough to write a great story, but they must also work to flesh out those ideas so that they are clear and persuasive.

You can do these things too.

It requires hard work and dedication (like the kind we talked about in Part 1).

Next post, Part 3, we discuss the final quality of a great writer: Having the right attitude.

Next: Part 3 - Attitude