I don't think there's a single condensed heuristic or rule of thumb that separates good writing from the rest. Different writers seek different things, so their process and manner of attaining them is going to be different, too. Some writers are very interested in people, others in places, and others in emotional sentiments or intellectual concepts. What works for one literary pursuit doesn't need to work for another.
I think if we want to attempt to overcome this inherent ambiguity and actually try to find common ground within good writers that are good in vastly different ways, we could use Marcus Aurelius' creed of "every action receiving its proportionate worth" as a starting point. When I think of the bad writing I've read, it often comes down to the author not being able to create distinctions - all sentences are of the same length, there's a systematic insertion of adjectives before most nouns no matter how relevant the noun in question is, everything is either too descriptive or fully devoid of it, etc. In essence, there's no melody or form (in the sense of structure) to the text.
Good writers may have styles, formulas, even tropes, but can reshape them continuously to fit many different moulds - moments of levity, beauty, tension, fear, comedy, and ecstasy can all be woven into one coherent piece of writing, because the writers know which central ideas and feelings they want to determine the reading of the text, and thus calibrate each action to it's worth in reaching that end. I'm making this sound more mathematical than it is, much of it is intuitive or a matter of practice and can't be "hacked" or "figured out" through an equation.
"The first and perhaps only rule for good style is to have something to say." - Schopenhauer
This Schopenhauer quote can be horrifically misinterpreted if one assumes he's saying that writing/art only needs a "message" to be beautiful. This is obviously not true, and the measly attempts to pass off the promotion of political and activist causes as a meaningful criteria for the evaluation of art speak for themselves.
What Schopenhauer is talking about is more akin to a certain cognitive clarity, i.e. "having something to say" about something that one has given considerable thought, reflection, experience, questioning, etc. This is why certain writers can extract wonderful, even lengthy pieces of writing out of the simplest topics or ideas. Herman Melville immediately comes to mind as someone who can seemingly wring every last drop of poetry and insight out of any given topic related to the sea:
"And thus have these naked Nantucketers, these sea hermits, issuing from their ant-hill in the sea, overrun and conquered the watery world like so many Alexanders; parcelling out among them the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans, as the three pirate powers did Poland. Let America add Mexico to Texas, and pile Cuba upon Canada; let the English overswarm all India, and hang out their blazing banner from the sun; two thirds of this terraqueous globe are the Nantucketer’s. For the sea is his; he owns it, as Emperors own empires; other seamen having but a right of way through it. Merchant ships are but extension bridges; armed ones but floating forts; even pirates and privateers, though following the sea as highwaymen the road, they but plunder other ships, other fragments of the land like themselves, without seeking to draw their living from the bottomless deep itself. The Nantucketer, he alone resides and riots on the sea; he alone, in Bible language, goes down to it in ships; to and fro ploughing it as his own special plantation. There is his home; there lies his business which a Noah’s flood would not interrupt, though it overwhelmed all the millions in China. He lives on the sea, as prairie cocks in the prairie; he hides among the waves, he climbs them as chamois hunters climb the Alps. For years he knows not the land; so that when he comes to it at last, it smells like another world, more strangely than the moon would to an Earthsman. With the landless gull, that at sunset folds her wings and is rocked to sleep between billows; so at nightfall, the Nantucketer, out of sight of land, furls his sails, and lays him to his rest, while under his very pillow rush herds of walruses and whales."
There is a certain "knowing" at play here, which doesn't have to stem from actual experience per se (although in Melville's case, he had an extensive experience of seafaring), but can come from a directed focus of the mind towards something. There's something akin to philosophy or rational thought happening there, but there's equally a large space for reveries, poetry, and inspiration being given.
p
I don't think there's a single condensed heuristic or rule of thumb that separates good writing from the rest. Different writers seek different things, so their process and manner of attaining them is going to be different, too. Some writers are very interested in people, others in places, and others in emotional sentiments or intellectual concepts. What works for one literary pursuit doesn't need to work for another.
I think if we want to attempt to overcome this inherent ambiguity and actually try to find common ground within good writers that are good in vastly different ways, we could use Marcus Aurelius' creed of "every action receiving its proportionate worth" as a starting point. When I think of the bad writing I've read, it often comes down to the author not being able to create distinctions - all sentences are of the same length, there's a systematic insertion of adjectives before most nouns no matter how relevant the noun in question is, everything is either too descriptive or fully devoid of it, etc. In essence, there's no melody or form (in the sense of structure) to the text.
Good writers may have styles, formulas, even tropes, but can reshape them continuously to fit many different moulds - moments of levity, beauty, tension, fear, comedy, and ecstasy can all be woven into one coherent piece of writing, because the writers know which central ideas and feelings they want to determine the reading of the text, and thus calibrate each action to it's worth in reaching that end. I'm making this sound more mathematical than it is, much of it is intuitive or a matter of practice and can't be "hacked" or "figured out" through an equation.
"The first and perhaps only rule for good style is to have something to say." - Schopenhauer
This Schopenhauer quote can be horrifically misinterpreted if one assumes he's saying that writing/art only needs a "message" to be beautiful. This is obviously not true, and the measly attempts to pass off the promotion of political and activist causes as a meaningful criteria for the evaluation of art speak for themselves.
(https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/24/arts/design/venice-biennale-review-art-israel.html)
What Schopenhauer is talking about is more akin to a certain cognitive clarity, i.e. "having something to say" about something that one has given considerable thought, reflection, experience, questioning, etc. This is why certain writers can extract wonderful, even lengthy pieces of writing out of the simplest topics or ideas. Herman Melville immediately comes to mind as someone who can seemingly wring every last drop of poetry and insight out of any given topic related to the sea:
"And thus have these naked Nantucketers, these sea hermits, issuing from their ant-hill in the sea, overrun and conquered the watery world like so many Alexanders; parcelling out among them the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans, as the three pirate powers did Poland. Let America add Mexico to Texas, and pile Cuba upon Canada; let the English overswarm all India, and hang out their blazing banner from the sun; two thirds of this terraqueous globe are the Nantucketer’s. For the sea is his; he owns it, as Emperors own empires; other seamen having but a right of way through it. Merchant ships are but extension bridges; armed ones but floating forts; even pirates and privateers, though following the sea as highwaymen the road, they but plunder other ships, other fragments of the land like themselves, without seeking to draw their living from the bottomless deep itself. The Nantucketer, he alone resides and riots on the sea; he alone, in Bible language, goes down to it in ships; to and fro ploughing it as his own special plantation. There is his home; there lies his business which a Noah’s flood would not interrupt, though it overwhelmed all the millions in China. He lives on the sea, as prairie cocks in the prairie; he hides among the waves, he climbs them as chamois hunters climb the Alps. For years he knows not the land; so that when he comes to it at last, it smells like another world, more strangely than the moon would to an Earthsman. With the landless gull, that at sunset folds her wings and is rocked to sleep between billows; so at nightfall, the Nantucketer, out of sight of land, furls his sails, and lays him to his rest, while under his very pillow rush herds of walruses and whales."
There is a certain "knowing" at play here, which doesn't have to stem from actual experience per se (although in Melville's case, he had an extensive experience of seafaring), but can come from a directed focus of the mind towards something. There's something akin to philosophy or rational thought happening there, but there's equally a large space for reveries, poetry, and inspiration being given.
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