What’s More Important: Storytelling or Writing Craft?

When first learning how to write, we often focus on the skills of writing craft—grammar rules, point of view, etc.—but storytelling skills are just as important. Some might even say they’re more important.

After all, we can probably think of popular books that suffer from poor craft, such as repetitive sentence structures or wonky dialogue tags, yet readers who fully admit the writing’s shortcomings will inhale the stories anyway. Even as writers trained to pay attention to craft, we’ll often love these books too, considering them “guilty pleasures” or addictive “crack” stories.

In other words, perfect writing craft will never make a dull story great, but compelling storytelling can make a mediocrely written book un-put-down-able. So while it’s hard to say if storytelling is more important, great storytelling is essential for elevating our story and overcoming many craft weaknesses.

What IS Storytelling (and Why Is It So Difficult to Learn)?

As writers, some skills we need to learn are very tangible (such as grammar rules), and other skills are more nebulous (such as voice). Tangible skills can be easier to learn, as the issues are easier to search for (including automated tools to help) and figure out how to fix. They’re also easier to teach, with bullet-pointed tips and advice, so most writing-advice articles focus on tangible skills.

Not surprisingly, storytelling falls into that intangible category, as it’s essentially “the art of telling an engaging story.” That aspect of art can make the skills involved tricky to learn—and near-impossible to teach. For example, it can be difficult to define what storytelling is (beyond the art aspect)—much less what makes storytelling great. Worse, there are no automated tools (that actually work) to help us find storytelling issues, and fixing issues can seem complicated or impossible.

How Can We Improve Our Storytelling Skills?

That said, we can break down the complex art of storytelling into slightly-more-tangible aspects that help us to identify its elements and strengthen how we tell our story. We can say storytelling is:

• how certain craft elements work together and
• the big picture of our story and
• the reader’s experience and
• our story’s sense of purpose.

Even better, each aspect of storytelling above also provides a different way to approach improvement. So we can focus on whichever perspective(s) best meets our needs of understanding and improving our storytelling.

Perspective #1: Storytelling Is How Craft Elements Interrelate

There are countless elements of writing craft, from pacing to grammar. While no craft skill is unimportant, some craft elements are essential for our storytelling:

• Layered characters—with an arc that explores themes and adds depth—gives our storytelling a heart.
• Consequential and personal goals, stakes, and motivations make our storytelling more compelling.
• An engaging point of view (POV) with the “right” amount of showing rather than telling creates a strong connection between readers and our storytelling.
• Tight pacing—along with a plot, obstacles, and story structure that adds narrative drive and sense of a journey—makes our storytelling more page-turning.
• A strong premise and story problem to solve gives our storytelling a reason to exist.

Separately, each of those craft elements are important, but one could be done well while others falter. However, if all of those craft elements are strong, they can work together to make something greater than the sum of its parts, improving our storytelling.

At the same time, other craft skills—ones that don’t interrelate with the story itself—don’t affect storytelling. That’s why some books with poor writing craft can still be compelling and readable (and popular).

Perspective #2: Storytelling Is the Big Picture

While Line and Copy Editing look for writing craft issues at the sentence and paragraph level, Developmental Editing looks at the big picture of the story at the scene and story level. In many ways, revision or developmental editing (and the skills involved) are about storytelling.

Are we telling the story we want to tell the best way we can? Think about the potential of our story and how we could change our storytelling to better reach that potential.

• What could we say with our story that we’re not saying yet? Are we missing elements or scenes for the story we want to tell?
• How could we get across our premise or theme better? Are there any elements or scenes not telling the story as well as they should?
• What changes could we make that would strengthen the core story we want to tell? Are any elements or scenes a distraction or unnecessary tangent for the story we want to tell?

Perspective #3: Storytelling Is the Reader’s Experience

When reading, we experience a journey of emotions. That journey is the reader’s experience, so when we talk about whether a writer is a good storyteller, we could say:

Good storytellers take readers on an emotional journey.

To improve our storytelling, we can be more conscious of the emotional experience we’re creating for readers. The more we know the journey we’re trying to take readers on, the better our chances of writing the story we intend.

• Think about the end of the story (and the journey), as the Climax and Resolution ending of our story is key to our readers’ experience.
• Think about our character’s journey, as the internal arc of how a character’s thoughts, beliefs, behaviors, etc. change by the end of the story significantly determines a reader’s experience.
• Think about the writing craft elements that most affect a reader’s emotional journey, such as POV, showing vs. telling, theme, plots/subplots, genre, pacing, etc.

Perspective #4: Storytelling Reflects the Story’s Purpose

A less-obvious perspective on storytelling is that we can ask ourselves about the purpose of our story. Why did we want to write this story (versus any of our other story ideas)?

“Purpose” here isn’t about a high-and-mighty moral to our story, but rather about the spark that makes this story unique, compelling, interesting, or otherwise worth a reader’s time. If we can’t think of why we were driven to write this story, there’s a good chance that “drive” is missing from our storytelling, and readers may reach “The End” and feel their time was wasted.

At the end of a story, readers should have a sense of why we wanted to tell this story (beyond simply making money). The art of telling an engaging story (i.e., storytelling) requires the story to feel like it has something to say to readers—we’re telling them a story for a reason. Without a purpose, the storytelling falls short.

The craft elements mentioned above all create arcs and themes that make a story feel like it has a purpose:

• characters that grow and readers can care about
• arcs that make each conflict and subplot part of a bigger whole in a unique premise
• themes reflected by what a character learns (or refuses to learn) over the course of a story

In other words, these various perspectives are all valid, with overlapping skills we can improve. Craft skills work with a story’s big picture and purpose and the reader’s experience to create a new level of art. As writers, we must learn and focus on many things. However, we shouldn’t let the skill of writing overpower the art of writing. *smile*

Want to dig deeper into this topic? Check out Jami’s companion post!

Have you struggled with understanding what storytelling is? Does this post give you ideas for how to improve your storytelling ability? Do you have any questions about storytelling or these various perspectives?

Summary for Busy Writers: Writing craft, no matter how perfect, can’t make an uninteresting story amazing. In contrast, great storytelling can minimize many writing craft mistakes, enthralling readers despite the craft errors. This post explores what storytelling is, why it’s important, and how to improve our storytelling skills.

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