Grossman, the book critic at Time and author of The Magicians and Warp, believes that a strong emphasis on storytelling will once again becoming important in novels

I couldn’t agree with this article more. As far as I’m concerned, one of the biggest scourges of our time is the book snob.  These are the people who deride the work of hugely successful storytellers like Stephen King or J. K. Rowling because it’s not high brow and/or literary enough. People who dismiss your book taste because you just want to read a story.

These are the same people, I suspect, who will jump all over every single one of your spelling or grammatical errors when you’re trying to tell a story or make a point. Part of me suspects that this behaviour is actually just pure jealousy that you’ve come up with an interesting idea or view, and the easiest way to belittle it is to suffocate it with a grammar lesson.

It’s a form of bullying that stifles creativity and I hate that. I know I have friends who don’t publish or share what they write because they’re already insecure and the thought of someone ripping apart their creativity is enough to prevent them from ever sharing. It’s something I’ve struggled with myself too.

Sure it’s important to protect the structure of our language but I’d rather read an entertaining story with a couple of spelling mistakes than a grammatically perfect instruction manual, wouldn’t you?