What is Good Writing?

People often think that good writing needs to be a lot of things: insightful, inspiring, emotional, intelligent, and grammatically correct. While all of these things are nice (especially the part about grammatical correctness), and they can help make writing memorable, they are not necessarily what make writing good.

I think that the definition of “good writing” ought to be synonymous with “effective writing.” Effective writing is writing that accomplishes the purposes of the person who is doing the writing. In other words, if the author wants his audience to feel a certain way, and his writing invokes that feeling, then his writing may be said to be “good” by my definition.

It may be that a writer is trying to make his audience sad and actually ends up making them laugh instead. While laughter is, most people would agree, a good and wholesome reaction, the fact that the author invoked laughter instead of tears would mean that his writing was not effective.

Take for example, a piece of writing from one of my favorite books, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows:

“But this is touching, Severus,” said Dumbledore seriously. “Have you grown to care for the boy, after all?”
“For him?” shouted Snape. “Expecto Patronum!”
From the tip of his wand burst the silver doe. She landed on the office floor, bounded once across the office, and soared out of the window. Dumbledore watched her fly away, and as her silvery glow faded he turned back to Snape, and his eyes were full of tears.
“After all this time?”
“Always,” said Snape.

If you know the scene, you’ll know that in it, the reason that Snape both hated and protected Harry Potter is revealed to the reader: that he loved Harry’s mother. The scene also has the effect of humanizing Snape as a character. I think a good argument could be made that this was exactly what J.K. Rowling was going for when she wrote this, and thus, this piece of writing could be considered effective.

Writing does not have to be iconic, like the example I included, to be good. It only has to accomplish the goals of its writing. For instance, my goal in writing this was to give you an idea for a definition of “good writing.” Have I succeeded?