Hello everyone! So, finally we received all answers from our participants from MARSocial author network. Are you excited to read the answers yet? Question #7 is “What do you consider most important in a novel – literary value or story? by Neil McGowan.
Let’s check out the answers from all 11 author participants !
1) Coleman Weeks
The story
2) Viv Drewa
If you don’t have a good story your work won’t have literary value.
3) K. J. Rollinson
This is a difficult question to answer. Obviously, the story and the characters must be intriguing to hold the reader’s interest, BUT nothing annoys me more when an author makes obvious grammatical errors. I can accept the occasional ‘typo,’ this happens in any book, but I do think ‘Indie authors’, in particular, should ensure their spelling and use of English (or whatever language they write in) should be of a high standard.
4) Sam Reese
Probably story. I’ve read (or tried to read) a lot of so-called “literature” and I just don’t get the appeal. It’s trash from a writing perspective, and I think that there are many much better books that deserve to be praised by lit profs.
5) Neil McGowan
Story! It’s all very well doing clever things with language in the name of literature but if the story isn’t there then I’ll put the book down and move on to something else that does have a story.
6) Marion Lovato
Bottom line for me is the story
7) Jaro Berce
I think we all read because of a story. Kafka has literary value but no story.
8) Marie Lavender
I think the story is more important, and this is why. Let’s say you read a book and you think, “Yeah, that was good.” A couple of hours later, you are imagining the scenes play out in your head and you just realized a message could be drawn from it. Did the author intend to convey that? Who knows? That’s the great fun about reading a book. You have no idea what the author “meant” to do. All you know is that there is something of value in any story, whether it’s a way to escape your worries for awhile or that you glean a message from it. I think that’s the best part, not knowing what you’re going to encounter. And maybe the author didn’t even intend to place a message or certain theme in the book, but inadvertently did. Every one of us comes from a different background, went through different experiences. What one person gleans from a text may be entirely separate from what the next person gets from it. That’s the beauty of it.
9) LaRae Parry
Story, story, story. Story trumps everything.
10) Theresa Moretimer
Wow! That is a hard one because to me they are both important and to me you really can’t have one without the other. To me me literary value is based on the story content and life-like your characters and stary are and when they come to life in a story that a reader can’t put down then you have great literary value. Of course not everyone would share my views but to me they are both important.
11) Annie Edmonds
Ok it’s getting deep in here, and I love this question. I think literary value IS in the story. If the story stays with you and you’re learning something you didn’t know, well too me that’s literary value. And I think it varies from reader to reader.
The next question is “What are your reasons for writing?” by Marion Lovato. Stay tuned with us for the next post !
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