What exactly is masterful writing?

What exactly defines masterful writing? What does masterful writing actually mean?

Not quite sure I understand the question but to me masterful writing is when you have a concept and it just works, it just clicks with everybody. You may have your niche works like, say, Professional Wrestling or Dead Island or 24, they may be good, they may be popular, but masterful writing or masterful works? Certainly not masterful writing.

Now take A Song of Ice and Fire or Game of Thrones, or Mass Effect, or Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Everybody reads these books or watches these shows or plays these games, or the few who don't certainly know of them.

Basically these are Magnum Opus works. These are not just popular or thought to be good, or Trope Overdosed works. These are works where you can discuss the story, the setting, the characters, all day. Take Purna Jackson, what can you say about her? She's aboriginal, used to be a cop and is angry. Okay, what can you say about Tyrion Lannister? A lot. Same with describing 24, what is it? Terror TV. US vs terrorists, US wins, kinda. Now describe Mass Effect. Lot of ground to cover, but you and most any fan enjoy covering that ground, however long it takes. That to me is masterful writing.

Yeah, you'll need to be a little more specific. "Masterful writing" could simply mean writing really, really well, as in writing like a master of the craft. Defined another way, it could mean writing with an authoritative voice.

In any event, I doubt it really means any one thing specifically, universally, to all people, but is rather a term applied by individuals to indicate a kind of writing those individuals find to be excellent.

A lot of people accuse ASOIF to be grimderp and pretentious, in places as /lit/ in 4chan for example.

Berserk is a better example of something who is considerating a full masterpiece, Or Oyasumi Pumpun or The Legend of the Galactic Heroes.

I suppose I wasn't being very specific when I was asking this. I was thinking about a post from a Metal Gear forum about how ridiculous the writing and the plot of the series is at times and while they do have a point, the series isn't really that bad when you look at it from a deconstruction angle. I guess I was looking to see what it means from a technical standpoint. Forgive me if I am still being to broad but I just anted to know what it mean from a technical standpoint if the underlying ideas, concepts and forms are still solid.

Every story has its haters. There are also of people that heavily criticize Harry Potter... and yet it is enjoyed by millions, eclipsing any other modern fictional story in readership.

edited 30th Sep '16 3:11:50 PM by FallenLegend

That is true.

Coming up for a technical definition for "good" or "masterful" writing is difficult, especially given that some of the greatest works of literature in history have been seriously flawed from one perspective or another. As far as Metal Gear goes, they may just have meant that the dialogue was bad (which, given that it's a work in translation, isn't terribly surprising). It means different things in different cultures, too. A character in a Japanese work may come off as passionate and heroic to a Japanese audience, but excessive and over-the-top to a western audience.

Take George R.R. Martin. He's generally great with plot and character, but his actual writing style is really very plain and workmanly (it's not at all bad, don't get me wrong; it's no more than he needs). Steven King and Dean Koontz's writing can get poetic, but their characters are usually not terribly memorable (and Koontz sometimes feels like he's pulling plot elements out of a hat).

Harry Potter is another. It's a great series, and obviously extremely popular, but there's some serious tonal dissonance, especially in the first couple of books. When Harry's at the Durseley's at the beginning of the first few volumes, it feels like he's in Roald Dahl novel; they're so ridiculously horrible to him, and are so cartoonish themselves, and he takes it all in such stride that it doesn't feel real. When he gets to Hogwarts, the tone is much more naturalistic. You can make the argument that this is intentional, given that Hogwarts kind of is the "real world" for Harry, but the criticism is still valid. It's just a matter of whether or not you think this tonal shift is a problem or not (most people don't).

A work can be good, can be great, and still have serious flaws. Seriously, I've taught fiction, and this is one of the hardest things to get people to grasp (the hardest is "liking it doesn't make it good, and hating it doesn't make it bad"). A work being flawed doesn't mean you can't, or shouldn't like it. If you connect with the story, then the flaws probably don't matter so much to you. But they might matter to other people with whom the story didn't connect so well.

edited 1st Oct '16 10:23:03 AM by Robbery

And that proves my point. Every story has it's critics and people that don't like certain aspects. No story can please everyone. Yes I agree every story has flaws. Though some flaws really don't matter.

If this "serious flaws" don't affect the enjoyment of most of the readership, then the author has succeeded. I would even argue that those "serious flaws" aren't really "serious" to begin with.

At this point the only author close to being untouchable is Shakespeare. But even he gets criticism for being "unoriginal."

edited 1st Oct '16 4:49:20 PM by FallenLegend

I never had seen any negative review of mangas as Berserk, Monster, Oyasumi Punpun or other, no one dislike them.

I am a Berserk fan, is not my type of work, but i still like it a lot.

(Albeit, i would say who there a lot of times who the series is too dark who become outright funny. Rape Horse!)

@Robbery and @Fallen Legend

I had never thought of that. I always thought that most stories need to meet a certain criteria. I guess I just need to learn how to be critical without being critical. I suppose it is all subjective.

It's not entirely subjective (though a lot of it is). There are a lot of purely technical aspects or aspects of style that can make a work unpalatable. If, for instance, you're writing a story from the perspective of an intellectual snob, it makes sense that you'd have flowery prose and lots of multi-syllabic words; at the same time, though, you have to gauge how much of that style, while appropriate to the character, is going to bore or otherwise put your readers off. Plots need to make sense, characters need to behave believably, etc. If you're interested, try taking a look at Stephen King's On Writing. He does a really fine job of providing a working definition of what good fiction writing should be, from a technical standpoint.

@ Fallen Legend: Yeah, it's not so much that Shakespeare doesn't get criticized, it's that, givenhis massive influence on Western Literature, he's critically invulnerable. Literary critics like to have people pay attention to them, and with Shakespeare nobody cares if you like him or not. The critic's opinion can neither elevate him nor detract from him.

edited 2nd Oct '16 10:40:08 AM by Robbery

My mistake I will stand advised.

Again it really depends on the context, what you mean by masterful writing. But I think a lot of it is really based on opinion.

For example you could pick a topic that everyone, and I mean everyone will want to read. But then you're going to have the naysayers go, "Oh well of course you would write that, we're hipsters, that's not nearly obscure enough for our tastes." Or your work is full of Purple Prose with all these unique phrases and foreign language and some would think you're showing off. Then you get the trolls. Not just those who genuinely do not like or have no interest in what everyone is into, they genuinely look at something and go, "Everyone loves this, how can we completely ruin it for them," thus how much stock do we put into 4chan?

So we have this difficult position of is the writing clever enough? Is it too clever? Is the topic in fashion? Does it look like bandwagon jumping? We could go on and on, and on, and on. A much easier way of answering what counts as masterful writing is seeing just what clicks and works with most everyone.