Ideas Trump the Quality of Writing
By JL Copeland
Can I write a book if I’m bad at writing?
Ideas trump the quality of writing.
This is the second in my five-part series of the top pieces of advice for writers a few years down the road but as yet unpublished (or published but still having a few jitters). The first in the series is HERE.
I can’t remember what books I read in my twenties, but I do remember my favourite writer was Zadie Smith.
Looking back, I’m certain I’m certain I never thought to try my hand at writing because my favourite writer was Zadie Smith.
It didn’t get any easier in my thirties when I moved from Zadie to Hilary (Mantel).
I knew diddly about writing and would have assumed that to be published, this was the standard. Want to be a writer, JL? Write like them.
If I had as many extra lives as Mario and wrote every day, I still wouldn’t be confident of ever getting close.
But it doesn’t matter, because the average bod isn’t picky. They don’t give a damn about gleaming words, they’re here for ideas (the character + story).
Ideas trump the quality of the writing.
(It goes without saying if you’ve got the idea and the writing chops, you can probably fill out the order for the Lear Jet.)
What does this mean?
Put simply:
Scintillating prose + ‘meh’ idea = adored in high-brow literary circles but a trickle of sales.
‘Meh’ prose + scintillating idea = ignored by the high-brows but who cares when a tsunami of punters rolls up for your book.
That second ‘meh’ is being damn generous, too. I’ve seen several multimillion bestsellers with dreadful writing (and this comes from someone who would be flattered if you described their prose as ‘workmanlike.’)
Hey, I’m not here to name names—and what the hell have I published, anyway?
…
Okay, fine. There’s one book about a billionaire into BDSM and another about the living descendants of Jesus. Here’s an excerpt from each:
“The fond memory caused Sophie a pang of sadness as the harsh reality of the murder gripped her again.”
Someone stole this guy’s pen and replaced it with a cliché-loaded Kalashnikov.
“‘Argh!’ I cry as I feel a weird pinching sensation deep inside me as he rips through my virginity.”
I’m sorry I can’t, I just can’t.
But, they say, hot rich guy into happy-slappy and God’s kids walking among us!
You see?
Your average reader is not a writer.
Entertain us, they say.
We don’t care about your vocabulary, your similes and metaphors—whatever the hell they are.
Give us blood, sex, twists and turns; barnstorming baloney at the borders of believability.
We’re not going to hate you if you write well, too—we probably just won’t notice.
As mentioned previously, my initial crack at writing was the first draft of a novel I wrote one winter vacation.
I knew nada about writing. I had an idea, and I went for it.
It was an adventure thriller set in a near-future Korea. It had teams of smugglers breaking into the DMZ to steal valuable, red-crowned crane eggs, an unsolved historic child disappearance/murder, a North Korean former boxer female protagonist, plus Kim Jeong-Eun’s daughter (well, a cameo). AND tigers.
I know. I can almost hear you sniffing with disdain. But hold on.
I gave that first draft to half a dozen friends and family.
Yeah, I’d assumed when you typed THE END, you were done.
A second draft? Why? It’s finished.
Oh, poor, naïve JL.
Within a year, I had studied and improved my writing to the extent I couldn’t even bear to look at that draft. When I did, I cringed so much I looked like a shrimp.
It’s riddled with cliches, ‘As You Know Bob’ dialogue, exclamation marks and worse.
I shudder as I think about it.
(NB: I don’t like to deal in absolutes when it comes to writing advice, but I’m 99.9% sure that you shouldn’t give a first draft of your novel to someone and expect a happy outcome.)
Daughters of the DMZ (yeah, even the title is a clunker) is gathering dust somewhere on my C drive. I haven’t opened it in seven years.
Since then, I’ve written and shared a smattering of short stories, blog posts and given regular updates of the current novel to the same people who read that first attempt at literary superstardom.
And guess which one they always ask about?
Yep, ‘the tiger one.’
They couldn’t give a monkey’s about how bad the writing was. The story gripped them. I’ll say it again, louder this time: IDEAS TRUMP THE QUALITY OF WRITING.
How does that affect you?
Can a normal person write a novel?
If you’re a total newb, and you’re wondering on the question, ‘can I write a book with no experience?’ or ‘is it a good idea to write a book?’
Yes. Every writer had no experience, once. And it’s always a good idea to write a book, the process is more important than the product. Don’t be put off because you think your writing is poor. Go for it. As I said, that’s how I got into writing.
Once you’ve got a few years of experience under your belt, you’ll no doubt have another idea for a novel. But you’ll be more aware. You’ll be reading the top authors in your genre and thinking, ‘I’ll never be able to write like them.’
You don’t have to write like them. Write like you.
This doesn’t mean you don’t have to write at least a couple of drafts, polish your prose and make it the best you can. We all have to do that.
You’re not alone in being intimidated. It’s normal to read a great book and have a crisis of confidence; to think, ‘There’s no way I can do this.’
Even experienced writers sometimes forget that no one naturally writes like what you see in a finished novel. At least not right off the bat.
Understand that it doesn’t matter who the writer is: those words have been rewritten, polished, checked, critiqued and rewritten again a dozen times before they land on Amazon or the shelves of Barnes and Noble.
But if you’re convinced you’ve polished as much as you can, and you believe in your idea, don’t beat yourself up because you think the quality of your writing still doesn’t compare with your idols.
Trust me, most readers won’t care.
It’s 2026 already; get those ideas down and get them out there.
You never know what could happen.
JL
PS: The first in the series is HERE.
PPS: After freebies, more writing advice and fadoodle from a fool lost in the dark neon vortex of Seoul, Korea?
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I promise there won’t be a ‘weird pinching sensation.’ Later, you might feel a slight twinge of regret, but there’s medication/alcohol for that.
2 Responses
I would have to agree as a reader myself. It is the idea that grabs me and keeps me reading not the writing. We often as readers of other people’s works we don’t see what happens behind the scenes that produces the story that we end up reading. Like a lot of things we just see the final draft of the work, not all the ones that written before it. So it does gives us a warped outlook when we become authors ourselves and beat ourselves up when we don’t create something good the first draft.
I know from what I have written so far the story I am creating. That drafts are not so much about polishing the prose, but trying different ways of getting from point A to point B in my story. I don’t know until I write the different ways that come into my head and which one feels the best for me.
But I think you give the piece of advice. Write like you. Sometimes that is the hardest part is figuring out how to do that and what the process is involved to make the writing reflect the individual and not be an intimation of someone else. Those are the best stories to read is an author with a great idea who is true to themselves in how they express that idea to the reader.
Spot on Michael.
My kids use earlier drafts of my novel for scrap printer paper, so sometimes (on the rear of a colouring-in of Pikachu) I’ll come across a second or third draft and the quality of the prose is almost laughable compared to where I am now with it. But it’s all part of the process.