on Writers Helping Writers:

When first learning how to write, we often focus on the skills of writing craft—grammar rules, point of view, etc.—but storytelling skills are just as important. Some might even say they’re more important.

After all, we can probably think of popular books that suffer from poor craft, such as repetitive sentence structures or wonky dialogue tags, yet readers who fully admit the writing’s shortcomings will inhale the stories anyway. Even as writers trained to pay attention to craft, we’ll often love these books too, considering them “guilty pleasures” or addictive “crack” stories.

In other words, perfect writing craft will never make a dull story great, but compelling storytelling can make a mediocrely written book un-put-down-able. So while it’s hard to say if storytelling is more important, great storytelling is essential for elevating our story and overcoming many craft weaknesses.