The Art of Literature: What Makes Great Writing Great

When you start reading a novel or short story, ask yourself: Does the first sentence compel you to read further? Is the prose clearly written, minimizing unnecessary punctuation, adjectives, and adverbs? Are the characters in the narrative vividly drawn? These are three essential rules that distinguish great literature from the banal. Examples include Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, works by B Traven, and classics by Charles Dickens.

Challenging Preconceptions

Great literature is built on ideas that are shocking, unexpected, strange, substantial, or innovative. It challenges our preconceived notions and habitual ways of thinking, making our brains uncomfortable. This is because the beauty in a piece of literature exists not in the work itself, but in the mind that perceives it. This is the key point made by David Hume in his Of the Standard of Taste.

Here is an excerpt for contextual understanding and comparison:

Many years later as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. At that time Macondo was a village of twenty adobe houses build on the bank of a river of clear water that ran along a bed of polished stones which were white and enormous like prehistoric eggs.

Let's contrast this with a more mundane example:

There was a loud rap on the hardwood door. Karus looked up from the scroll he'd been reading feeling somewhat annoyed. He was seated at a rough wooden table scattered over with a variety of scrolls. "Come," Karus called.

The first passage is from One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. The second is a generic, less evocative account. Notice the vivid imagery and unique language of the first, which captures the reader's attention and imagination.

Observing the First Few Paragraphs

The first few paragraphs of a piece can tell you if it is worth your time. Here are a few more examples to analyze:

Exceptional:

When I reached C Company lines which were at the top of the hill, I paused and looked back at the camp just coming into full view below me through the grey mist of early morning. We were leaving that day. When we marched in three months before, the place was under snow, now the first leaves of spring were unfolding. I had reflected then that whatever scenes of desolation lay ahead of us, I never feared one more brutal than this, and I reflected now that it had no single happy memory for me.

This excerpt is from The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.

Banal:

Some years ago, never mind how long precisely, having little or no money in my purse and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth, whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul, whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet, and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish, Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean as I do.

This excerpt is from Moby Dick by Herman Melville.

Engaging:

The sky was just beginning to lighten, and there were birds singing when Kate Tucker got up at four-thirty on a May morning as she did every day. A tall, leggy, blonde, she unwound herself from the sheets and went to get a cup of coffee. Here, days were long and started early, working on her father’s ranch in the Santa Ynez Valley. They had moved there from Texas thirty-eight years before when she was four years old. Her mother had died the year before, a few months after her youngest sister Caroline was born. Her father was a ranch hand; he had decided to come to California with his meager savings, his truck, and his three little girls: Kate, Gemma, who was a year younger than Kate, and Caroline.

This is an excerpt from Kate by William Faulkner.

Impactful:

124 was spiteful. Full of a baby's venom. The women in the house knew and so did the children. For years, each put up with the spite in their own way, but by 1873, Sethe and her daughter Denver were its only victims. The grandmother Baby Suggs was dead, and the sons Howard and Buglar had run away by the time they were thirteen years old—as soon as merely looking in a mirror shattered it that was the sign...

This excerpt is from Beloved by Toni Morrison.

Conclusion

The quality of literature is subjective, as each reader perceives it differently. As Hume notes, "Beauty is no quality in things themselves: it exists merely in the mind which contemplates them, and each mind perceives a different beauty. One person may even perceive deformity where another is sensible of beauty, and every individual ought to acquiesce in his own sentiment without pretending to regulate those of others."