finalcarrots wrote:
In writing, talent is the raw stuff you need to actually write. Skill is the ability to distill that talent into a comprehensive and comprehendable work of art.
Talent is an inborn trait, skill is learned. If someone with talent hones their skills, they will exceed someone without talent that is just practicing skill.
Take this as an example -- when Dean Koontz began writing, he was called a hack, a rip-off of Stephen King. Let's go ahead and put bias aside, and say that's true. Dean Koontz's stories follow 10 years behind Stephen King's and his writing is lackluster at best. Koontz has the skill to produce a work of fiction, King has the talent augmented by skill to make a work of fiction good.
I guess what I'm saying is that talent is the more important of the two, but talent without skill is a waste. You just need talent to be good, skill to use that talent. A skill without talent is like a computer copy of a great artist's work -- it looks good, but there's nothing behind it.
That covers pretty much everything I was going to say.
I will add that skill in the creative arts is something grossly misunderstood by people who have never seriously tried them. Which is to say, a lot of people think they could write a novel, but have no idea how much time and labor is needed to pound out even a mediocre one, with, say, complete sentences and paragraphs that people can actually read and understand. Likewise, the quicky versions of articles about the great Renaissance painters talk about their inspiration and gifts, but say much less about how they literally worked dawn to dusk from childhood to adult as apprentices to hone their skills in working with paint and stone. And so on and so forth for music, architecture, engineering, etc.