Is a gripping story enough to carry a book to the shelves, irrespective of writing style? Or is a literary tale with exceptional prose but a dull plot more likely to appeal to agents?
Is a gripping story enough to carry a book to the shelves, irrespective of writing style? Or is a literary tale with exceptional prose but a dull plot more likely to appeal to agents?
Being a competent writer I think is key.
Simply because plot holes are easier to iron out, its possible to change/improve structure of a plot.
But to improve on writing style is a lot harder I think, how does one simply 'be a better writer'.
That's how I would look at it.
However I've read many a book where I've thought the plot weak, or found plenty of spelling mistakes and poor sentence structure and it's still made it to the shelves so who the hell knows. :)
Definitely depends on the agent. And you only have a chance of success with what you really want to write.
It depends on the agent, I'd have thought. Wouldn't appeal to me, though, but then neither would a badly written gripping story. Actually I don't think the latter is possible - think of the number of average films out there which could have been so much better with a decent screenplay.