Inspired by the "Art v. Writing" poll, I got to thinking -- what exactly is good writing?

I don't mean the stuff you like because it pushes your nostalgia or goofy fun buttons, I'm talking the stories that you feel you want to scream at the rooftops about, that you'd feel proud and eager to recommend to virtually anyone, from your grandma to an intellectual elitist art nazi to your buddy who works in construction.

Whart are the stories you unabashedly proclaim to be good, straight up? Post them here so we can make snarky, condescending comments about your choices while feeling overly sensitive and insecure about our own picks.

Let's do this shit.

What medium are we discussing? The criteria for a well-written novel are not the same as for a well-written screenplay, etc.

I guess I'm not so much into the nuts and bolts of writing here -- I mean storytelling. Writing for the medium aside, what are the intangible elements you look for in a piece of art?

It has to hold my interest from beginning to end. Beyond that. I don't know that there are any specific elements that will automatically make something "good" to me.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the question?

I've been reading classic Green Lantern comics.

In them the difference between shitty, horrible writing and good writing (O'Neil vs Wolfman) hits you like the 18-wheeler Jordan used to drive.

No, just seeing what people's standards are. It can be anything from "it has to affect me emotionally in some way" to "it has to feel new and fresh" or "it has to cover meaningful philosophical themes".

It's sort of a "whatever" thread -- you can't be wrong here.

It sounds like he is asking for specific stories.

comics:
Cosmic Oddessy
Nexus
Avengers: Under Siege

Novels:
First three books of the Song of Ice and Fire
Most of the Spenser novels, but A Catskill Eagle is my favorite.
The War of The Spider Queen series

TV:
Mad Men
Deadwood
The West Wing

Movies:
The Shawshank Redemption
Reservoir Dogs
Captain America

Maybe I misunderstood. It has to engage me at the character level, give me someone to identify with but not necessarily root for, though that does help. It has to have a complex and compelling plot, and be unpredictable without the feeling that they are just pulling plot twists out of their asses. Finally I need a satisfying conclusion, which doesn't necessarily mean that everything is resolved. However, a story can have none of this and still engage me if it provokes sufficient thought, like No Country for Old Men.

Engaging characters
Clever ideas
Narration that flows
Entertaining plot

Essentially, I'm looking for two or more of those things.

Agreed.

This is what I try to keep in mind for my own writing. I don't judge other writers on it. I'm also not a professional, so take it all with a grain of salt.

* A good story is more than a series of events. It has a beginning, middle and an end that makes sense, and there's a point to telling it.
* It is concise. There is no scene, exposition or dialogue included that doesn't either support the plot, define the characters or reinforce the theme. (The way I mean it, concise doesn't necessarily mean short. Alan Moore's From Hell is a very long comic, but there isn't a panel in there that doesn't do one of those three things as far as I remember.)
* The story is important, the storyteller isn't. Story elements that do not serve the plot, theme or characters is wanking or laziness - the writer is pleasing himself instead of serving the story, or just filling space.

The hardest part for me is trimming scenes that I think are cool or clever, but aren't required by the story. It is painful to cut a scene or character I've become attached to.

I would actually agree with this fix.

I disagree.

I would go with all that, plus what Monk said about engaging characters. And the characters have to be doing something that the reader finds interesting (different readers will have different ideas of that, of course). The characters are DOING something--not spending most of the book exploring their own psyches. I'd like to know how they feel, all right, but that shouldn't be the whole story.

To add to that "the story is important, the storyteller isn't" point Trevor made, it's usually best if the writer doesn't try too much formal experimentation--odd ways of telling the story and so forth. I really hate a lot of the prose style fads of recent years. If a reviewer calls a story "lyrical" I'm probably not trying it! And that goes double when "lyrical" is applied to nonfiction.

Character, character, character.

Nobody (or almost nobody, or perhaps just 'few') reads Lord of the Rings wondering what grand vista will be revealed next: instead they wonder what will happen to Sam and Frodo and all the other characters Tolkien makes us care about. The grand battles and epic conflicts are only really moving when 'human' characters like Merry and Pippin are thrust into them. We admire and respond to Dickens' social intentions in his novels only because he has made us care for Pip, or Oliver, or David Copperfield, or whoever it s. Which is why The Silmarillion, say, is awesome in its own way, but cold and unmoving, because it has very little in the way of characters with whom we can identify.

This is in a novel, though: a short story has different dynamics, and is perfectly suited to science fiction, because it is built around an elaborated conceit: here character CAN be incidental to the main purpose: in a novel length story, however, character is paramount.

Good writing is writing that reaches inside a reader and makes them experience a feeling or a thought they've never had before.

Readers are all different. Ergo, good writing is not an absolute.

But goddammit, no matter whether you're writing a novel or an essay or a short story or a movie review, you better know how to construct a sentence and a paragraph and a scene, or you ain't reaching nobody with nuthin'.

No, you can list specific stories and general elements of stories. I want it all!

Man, I wished I liked anything as much as you like every thought that pours out of Grant Morrison's head.

Well, you're not wrong.

Did I just get pwned?

And with kindness. The worst kind of pwn.

Hurts so good!