A Subjective Assessment of a Good Writer

To simply be a writer, it is frequency and enjoyment of writing that allows them to call themselves a writer. However what makes a writer good, goes beyond one’s technique and grammar skills. What makes a good writer, is the ability to write something worthwhile.

To do that, one must have an awareness of what it is they are writing, the ability to showcase that, and the ability to get the job done in an efficient manner, whether the job be to tell a riveting story, compare and contrast, record events, etc. In some cases one’s writing will require them to simply state the facts. Sometimes it will require them to add in bits of their personality. Other times it is the ability to paint pictures with words that is necessary.

When defining a good writer, it becomes about the quality of their writing, regardless of how often they write or how much they enjoy writing. Being good at something either comes about through talent, skill, practice, or any combination of those three things. When it comes to being good at writing, there are a number of different techniques and ways that are commonly used to assess the quality or level of a person’s writing. Grammar, spelling, sentence structure, etc is often the first of these factors that people use to define a good writer. That is what schools and institutions teach.

To argue that point however, grammar is just a technicality. It is not the grammar or other technicalities that makes someone a good writer, it is simply an extra skill that is beneficial while writing. It is absolutely not necessary however. Looking at the writers in non-creative lines of work this is found to be true: A court stenographer is not hired or fired because they always spell everything correctly, they are hired because they are efficient. A forgotten period in the document does not change the value of it or change what happened in the proceedings of that day’s court case. A misspelled word that leaked past the editors into a newspaper is infrequently noticed or cared about, it is the news that matters. You open almost any modern published book in a library and you will find very few spelling errors, but that is because after the author was finished, their work was given to professional book editors before hitting the shelves. Even before every author had the luxury of getting an editor, it was not the grammar or spelling that defined the ability of a writer. If you read Jane Austin’s work you will find plenty of examples of her using double negatives and if you read work of Shakespeare he is guilty of ending sentences with prepositions. That does not make their work any less great, even though if they were alive today they would get a grade docked off in school for grammatical errors.

To write well, one must create something worthwhile. Weather it be a technical piece or a creative piece. Something that accomplishes the goal they set out to achieve. The key word in that sentence is “they”. The goal they set out to achieve. Because in the end, whether one is writing what they want to write or writing something out of obligation, defining a good writer will always be a game of subjectivity in a world where it is impossible to please everyone.

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