Good

What makes something good?
I don't mean a good meal that "hits the spot" but a piece of art that is really, undeniably, and inherently good? There's been some speculation recently on the nature of What's Your Story, so I would like to use this post to clear up what I (as one person) define as good art. 

For me, I divide good into three factors. You may not agree and you may see other factors, but these are the most prominent for me. When I admire any form of art, it is because the art is unique, beautiful, and excellent.

Let's start there, at unique, or another word for creativity. For a piece of art to be unique, I believe it begins at the person on the other side. Every person is unique, and so whatever they make will be a special, new creation. If your hands are unique, logically wouldn't anything to which you put your hands be unique as well? True, there is nothing new under the sun, but there are countless expressions of the stories already told. That's why in writing classes, a student will learn about archetypes, and then read of the stories that came before him, realizing that the same structures are used but a different product is produced with every person. That's unique at work. If you sit both Ernest Hemingway and J.K. Rowling in front of a desk to write the story of the Scarlet Letter, wouldn't you think that those two versions of a simple story would be so vastly different from each other's and Nathaniel Hawthorne's version?
It's just like a dancer compiling ordinary turns and leaps into a choreographed piece. Separate, none of these moves are new, but together in the brain (your brain), it's novel and special. And if they dare to go further, it's unique. Because they did something no one else has or could have done. You can improve unique more and more as long as you don't limit your imagination.
Your story is unique to you. No one else can tell it. So whatever you create will be special. Just look at this blog. All of these words have been used a million times over but never in this exact arrangement. That's all because of me. Only I could tell this story. That's unique.

What about beautiful? I am a firm believer in the old saying, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder," but I am also a believer of universal beauty (a contradiction in the highest degree. Unique, huh?) For the defense of the former, beauty is relative, because people see beauty through different lenses, based on their unique personalities and worldviews (see how everything adds together?). Have you ever gone to an art gallery with a friend? Watch which paintings they hover over and at which you linger. Beauty is never the same. And that's the beauty of beauty.
However, there is a universally accepted tradition of beauty; if I didn't say that, I would be lying. Just look at famous models, the Mona Lisa, or Aurora Borealis. So how do I reconcile this contradiction? Well, I realize that, according to art at least, this standard most people call beauty is actually known as excellence. If a host of people can agree that a statue is beautiful, they usually are referring to it being well-done. Beyond that, the beauty of the sculpture is seen in different perspectives; they may all see it beautiful, but some more than the others. So, this standard is not a problem at all for beauty anymore. If excellence is universal, that makes beautiful relative.
So beautiful is opinionated. And if all three aspects are extremely strong, nearly every person in the world will say, "That is beautiful." Picasso is a famously controversial topic because his work is regarded as beautiful, even though everything within the frame appeals to ugliness. His most famous works are the opposite of beauty, and yet they are loved. If it's true that they are beautiful, then the beauty came from his own heart. And where does creativity come from? You. (Refer back to the paragraph on unique if you must.)
Beautiful is when your entire heart is bared on a canvas or a stage or in a song. It's that moment when someone reads a poem they wrote that emanates from their very soul, and the only reaction in the room is "That was beautiful." Your heart can touch other hearts. And every heart is unique, so all hearts will be touched by beautiful in infinitely different ways. That's why we need so many artists. There's always someone out there who gets us.

So what about excellence, that universal poster child for good? That's the hardest aspect of making something good, in my opinion. A lot of creations will lack this, and that's okay.  As I said earlier, there is a universal standard for what is excellent. However, even this can be challenged. If art has a standard of excellence, then where does that standard come from? Popular opinion? Maybe. It's a lot easier to tell when something's bad than when it's good. To me, excellence, as you'll see, is just the bare bones of the technique. So maybe that's all that the standard is. Pretty shaky, huh? That's why I favor the approach to relativity in art. And yet, somehow, we can all agree when something looks right.
Excellence is a process that you should strive for every day. If you wake up thinking you've already achieved excellence, you've actually only failed, because excellence means constantly bettering yourself. It's never finished. It's impossible to arrive at perfection, but excellence is pretty darn close. Excellence isn't just a better synonym for good; it means to be superior in an area. So how do people become superior in an area?
Simply learning and practicing. You do know Da Vinci had to learn how to paint once right? It's easy to forget that. After learning how to go about doing the art form, you must practice it. Concert pianists practice every day, touring ballerinas stretch every day, and Broadway performers sing every day. If they don't, they're fools. To me, excellence is when someone has first put in the necessary work to learn the art form, is then diligent in creating the said art form time and time again (practice doesn't make perfect, but it can make excellence), and finally, is ruthless in pushing themselves to go even further than they thought they could go. I know what my bar of excellence is, and I sure know when I don't hit it. Do you?
So to be excellent, you have to learn the craft. You can't go onstage for the first time and deliver a Shakespeare soliloquy, bringing the audience to tears (unless you have amazing talent, which I'll get to in a second). You have to learn it and hone it through practice. And even then, talent comes into play (told you). Talent is a vague word for what can be called your inherent abilities. Your talent is what you have been created to do. Talent helps you reach excellence, because it helps makes you, for lack of a better explanation, good at something. In what would take people years to perfect, you might have done in a month. Talent alone doesn't define anything however; it just helps. But even without talent, a bad writer can become a good writer, a good writer a great writer, and a great writer an excellent one, all through learning the craft (no one wants to see a misspelled title (unless it's deliberate. Which would be unique)), practicing the craft, and pushing yourself to be the best you can be in the craft. If you're not trying to be the best you can be at what you do, then why are you doing that thing? It had better not be for the applause. The applause always dies down. Your hard work doesn't. And by the way, fighting for excellence? It shows. People can see it.

So after working towards a standard of excellence, which certainly shows, your art is considered beautiful by those whose hearts are touched by yours. All because your heart is unique.

And not everyone will see it as beautiful, by the way. When you fight for something, more often than not, you encounter resistance. You will be attacked, You will be made fun of.
Do you know how many times I've been made fun of for What's Your Story? Don't let that stop you from something beautiful. Even if only one person finds it beautiful, that's pretty worth it.
Don't we all need a little beauty in an otherwise ugly life?

Now, some final thoughts. It's very possible to love an art form but be no good at it. I say with my whole heart to still go for that art form and create it. I can't paint, but that doesn't stop me. I know no one is going to buy my paintings, but sometimes, since beauty is in the eye of the beholder, someone will find something I did good. Because they see that I pushed myself with practice and told my own story.
Told you. It shows.

Another thought (or warning, if you will): it is also possible to create art without one of the attributes.
Without unique? You might know it by the familiar term of imitation. Don't copy someone else. Trust your own genius and create your own story. Someone else's just won't do for what you need to tell your own story.
Without excellence? That's called laziness, and it's the bane of an artist's existence. Don't you dare use your talent or the fact that you are unique to opt out of excellence. That is the coward's way out. Anyone can do that. What will you do?
Without beautiful? That's called trash. Usually if something lacks beauty, it's because it's something so opposite of beauty that it's utterly grotesque to you and your story. Instead of revealing their heart, the artist is attacking yours. We have all encountered artists like this. They're loud, they're angry, and they're full of hate. Don't be the excellent trash. Throwing out beautiful doesn't make you more unique.

So, after a long explanation, I call "art" an expression of creativity. Your creativity. But I also call good art an expression of creativity that is simultaneously excellent, beautiful, and unique.
But What's Your Story isn't about pushing you to excellence or finding masterpieces, and it's certainly not about encouraging mediocrity or inflating self. As supporter Cody Hill said, "It's about doing something creative, whether it meets a standard of excellence or not." It's about encouraging people that it's okay to fail, and that even if it's not excellent, the chances are that someone will find it beautiful.
One time, my friend pulled out an old painting that had been in the closet for years because they thought it was bad, and my other friend couldn't believe why it had been placed in a closet in the first place. The painting was then given as a gift, and it's still hanging on that second friend's wall to this day. You have to believe that someone will love what you create that much because hearts love hearts. But only if you find it good first.

And why shouldn't you? It's unique to you, isn't you? Because you're unique. And that's something to celebrate.

It's certainly a good starting point.