Writer achivements

[saliotthomas]

What is ,to you readers, the greatest achivement for a writer.What make an autor and a book unforgettable and close to you?

There is a few things in my opinion.

The first is the truth,the fact that the writer manage to put words on something you knew and felt but were incapable of naming.And by doing so open your eyes to that very particular thing and help you understand it.
Or descibe a completly foreigne act or place and manage to get you involve,make it feel natural.

I also like when a writer manage to put talent in popular writing.It is relatively easy to please reader and intellectual,because you talk the same language.It's is something else to put quality in book for people who are not use to it.The art of vugarisation is a very difficult one.

And i love been surprised,taken aback,and disturbe in my routine.Been given just for a while and extra bit of brain,need an awful lot of talent;

[a lost weekend]

The first thing that comes to mind would have to be Dostoevsky. He spent ten years in labor camp in Siberia during which he was lined up to get shot only to find out at the last minute that it was sick joke.

And then he wrote The Brothers Karamazov, a masterpiece without a trace of the bitterness you'd expect the man to feel.

[xxGOLDENxx]

To me the mark of a true author is their ability to extract emotion from the reader. To get them into the story enough to cry at a tragic death, or feel outrage at some conjured up injustice. That takes the story to the next level. Its not just words on paper, your living it.

[Heteronym]

I agree a writer should strive to astonish the reader with truths that have been obvious all along but have remained unimagined or unworded. Like this beautiful sentence I found in William Beckford's Vathek:

His pride arrived at its height when, having ascended for the first time the eleven thousand stairs of his tower, he cast his eyes below, and beheld men not larger than pismires, mountains than shells, and cities than bee-hives.The idea which such an elevation inspired of his own grandeur completely bewildered him; he was almost ready to adore himself, till, lifting his eyes upward, he saw the stars as high above him as they appeared when he stood on the surface of the earth.

It's a humbling notion that no matter how high you stand, the stars will always be infinitely distant. I have never thought of this, and Backford made me realise it.

But for me the real achievement of a writer is creating delight in the reader. Every writer should strive to make the reader enjoy his work.

[Writer44]

Interesting topic Saliot.

Along the lines of what others have said, I think a writer can form a bond with the reader that is invisible yet very strong. The reader has to suspend disbelief (in the case of fiction) and believe the story as presented. When the writing disappears and the narrative is internalized by the reader, then the writer is reaching that plane where the reader is experiencing the events almost first hand. There are writers both past and present that can do this and I'm impressed when I realize it, usually when I get to the last pages and am left wanting more.