You wanna fight?

Narrative or Lyric. It’s a controversial subject. Canon or Nikon? PC or Mac? Spit or swallow? Each of these will have vehement preachers of the worth of each. One is called functional and the other pretentious and shallow. It causes arguments at dinner parties, between friends and enemies alike. It can turn best friends against each other. Each of them feel that they are right, and enduces an attitude of smuggery (Yes I made that up).

Narrative: it’s the spine of the writing. It has to be there otherwise what’s the point of reading it? Anything else is a case of the emperor’s new clothes. The writing has to carry the story along, not navel gaze throughout. I’d rather read a story where something HAPPENS, not the thought’s of a narcissistic self absorbed author who tries to be clever and just alienates people. Half of the people who claim to prefer literary fiction don’t have a clue anyway and are just pretentious sheep.

Lyric: It’s the abstract within the text. Why does there have to be a plot? People and situations can be artful and fascinating. We shouldn’t have to follow a formula in writing. Beautiful metaphor and use of language is as skilful as plot building, if not more. A vivid image can stay with you far longer than a plot which has been done over and over. They do say after all that there are only 7 different plots in writing.

Like each of these arguments, the answer is they are as good as each other. It depends on what you want out of your writing or what you read. Both have qualities the other doesn’t. You choose what you want out of it and choose what’s better for you. Or what the purpose of your writing is. The bonus of being a writer is that we don't have to invest huge amounts of cash and then justify our use of one or the other. We can play around with both, and use what we feel is right for our current work. We can pick up a piece of literary fiction or lyrical poem and if we have the inclination read that, or go for something which has a great story.

I personally prefer Canon, PC and Narrative. I like a bit of lyric too, when it’s vivid and appropriate, the perfect book for me is a balance between skilful imagery and writing and great plotting. Crap writing is just annoying no matter how great the story is and gives me rage. Likewise 400 pages of the thoughts of a man enduring a mid life crisis would have to have something to keep me reading other than how he 'finds' himself spiritually.  

 I'm not giving the answer to the other one.