‘Good writing,’ two words you can find on many mouths, but sometimes with little in common.
Fantasy geeks think of Tolkien’s descriptions, the endless linework he crafted to describe his work. Academics and traditional readers might think of Fitzgerald of, if slightly more cultured, Oscar Wilde. As a different breed of geeks - but still geeks nonetheless - they mostly praise the work on a line-by-line level.
When I think of good writing, I think of Ovid and the Metamorphoses. The story of Pygmalion and Galatea narrated in elegant verses.
I already differ in what I deem good writing compared to most people because I look at both the micro- and macro-level of a story. I’m not impressed by the linework if there's not an overarching narrative paired to it. And if I have to choose, I'll always choose the narrative over the linework. Why? Because it's harder to have a good narrative compared to writing good prose.
And that's the first thing that many elitist don't seem to understand. Good prose - hell, even a good POV's voice - can be manufactured. Good narrative? Much harder. How can you prove that? Simply by the fact that good writers don't always write hits. Is every Dan Brown's book a hit? Was every Tolkien's book a hit? No. But was there a 'quality' problem with their linework? No.
A book relies much more on its narrative than the proper linework. Take Paranoid Mage, for example. If you read the individual paragraphs, there's nothing special. Nothing. The prose is simple and straightforward. There's not even something on a multiple-paragraphs level; there's no symbolism, no rhetorical devices that leave you saying 'wow, that was good.' No. It's all in the overall narrative devices that craft a special narration. The work on the scenes, and how scenes are supposed to be crafted - that's what Paranoid Mage excels at.
So, you can talk about two things, the micro and the macro. The micro is the quality of your prose line-by-line. The macro is the quality of your scenes and how they create a chain-reaction once you put them together.
Web novelists are, obviously, more apt at the scenework than the linework. Why? Many reasons, one of which might be that they lack the 'formal training' you can often see among readers of 'classics.' And so, people who come from a traditional background usually don't consider web novels as good literature; in their case, if there's any bad linework, you have a bad book. And look, in some cases it may even be true. But do you know what you have when there's a book with good linework but terrible scenework? A terrible book. Why terrible? Because it's boring.
If you have a writer who's bad at linework, it's much easier to improve compared to those writers who are bad at scenework. If you are a boring person, there's a big chance you are going to write boring books. Not all writers have to be smart, but all writers have to be entertaining.