I've wrestled with this before. Some books have really intriguing characters, strong stories, and great plot twists – but they're written horribly.
And I've seen the inverse – dull characters, weak or nonexistent motives, bland plots – but the prose is beautiful. It can paint a great picture in my head, it just doesn't end up being a particularly memorable one.
Will you keep reading in either of these circumstances?
For me, I can definitely power through some bad prose for a good story. And the better the story, the more I'm willing to put up with. But if a book doesn't hook me or drag me in, I don't care how flowery or captivating the descriptions are, or how wonderfully written it is – I just can't force myself to continue when I don't care what happens.
by midnight_rebirth
6 Comments
I can do bad prose and good story (unless it’s really bad), but not good prose and bad story.
I read Donnybrook, so yes
It… depends. I get infuriated trying to muscle through truly baaaaad prose. It’s neither the brevity nor verbosity of the language either, but how it’s hung together. That said, I lean away from super spare prose, as it fails to provide enough emotive development of either setting or character. For me.
If the writing quality is high, I may ignore some plot holes or cliches or guessable mysteries. But I’ll be kinda bored and just absorb some of the language in that case.
I’ve DNF both types of book, over the years.
Either of those can be a redeeming factor for me, but only to a certain extent. I suspect that’s pretty much the case for most people. If the story or characters suck, I’ll get bored eventually even it the prose is really beautiful. If the prose is terrible, I’ll get annoyed by it and won’t be able to enjoy the story. They cause different types of dislike I guess (boredom vs. annoyance) but neither type is better or worse, just different.
Good story with bad prose for me
I think in either case, it probably depends on how good the good part is in that it balances out the bad. I’ve definitely read either combination, but kept going when I’ve been enjoying one aspect of it. I think the _hook_ can be a slightly different aspect though, surely you can have good prose but a bad hook, I’ve often seen it in discussions as “Oh just wait 3800 pages then it gets good”.