Tuesday, August 18, 2009

What Makes Quality Writing?

Many of you are aware that I write curriculum and product reviews as a member of The Old Schoolhouse Magazine's Homeschool Review Crew. Well, a product came across my desk last week that I was very excited to receive for review. It is a writing program for children based on quality literature. In a few weeks, I will review it on my Leaders In Learning blog. Click here to favorite that blog: http://www.leadlearners.blogspot.com/.
I've been scouring the pages of this course and finding many things I like about it. One thing it does is to define good quality writing by a list of standards. I agreed with their choices but also thought it could be a bit subjective to make a list like that as various people might think certain qualities are more important in writing and literature.
This thought process led me to post a question on here for my fellow writers. I know you are all fellow readers of good books and magazines. So....
Which characteristics do you feel are important to quality writing? Which are less important? Do they need to be well written or is it acceptable to be a little loose on the grammar as long as the story is interesting? What type of literature is high quality and what is average?
Wondering minds want to know so please leave your answers on in the box AND if you know of someone else who would be interested in voicing their opinion on the matter, please send them here. I would love to know what you all think. I love to learn. Thank you.

1 comment:

Rich and JoJo Tabares said...

I think this might be one of those things where people say they don't know what it is but they know it when they read it. If you haven't studied writing in depth, you may not know what you are looking for when evaluating another's writing but you do know if it engages you. You may not know that the characters are not fully developed, but you will probably feel the main character is not "realistic." Some people are word snobs and are irritated by bad grammar to the point where they cannot enjoy a story if there are a few errors here and there. Others may have a slight criticism of the grammar but highly recommend the story. Each person is so different. I love recommendations that allow me the choice. "Facinating story, but grammar snobs may find a few errors distracting"