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Can Good Writing Be Taught?

August 23, 2019

One of the key themes in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is to which extent our morality is a product of our environment. Are you born bad, or do you become? This might sound like an irrelevant point for our topic – can good writing be taught? – but in fact it’s directly relevant.

The reason? Instead of asking, can good writing be taught, we can rephrase the question and wonder: Are you born a good writer, or can you become one?

Want yet a third reformulation of the same question? Is good writing a matter of talent or skill (that can be practiced and taught)?

Can good writing be taught?
Not everyone can become excellent. But everyone can become better

Obviously enough, this is a critical thing to know. If good writing cannot be taught – in other words, if you are only born a good writer – then you either have it or you don’t. In such a framework, someone who is not born with the talent, cannot be a good author.

If this sounds a bit too peculiar, and you resist it, your instincts are right. However, the opposite isn’t quite true either. There is such a thing as talent in writing, though probably not in the way you expect. Ah, how wonderful… There are never any simple answers, are there?

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