Storytelling uses any avenue possible to express the story.

Shamans dance around a fire, play-actors get on stage, Film directors use CGI , actors, puppets, sets, and so on.

A writer writes. A good writer uses all of the tricks available to them that their language provides and is capable of doing so in a consistent manner to create their own written voice.

'To Kill a Mockingbird' was both well-written and a good story; the social impact it created reflects that.

I've read plenty of works that are either exclusively well-written, or exclusively a good story. It's not rare.

It may be a great story, but lack good characterization or dialog, overcoming those weaknesses through some other factors of the writing and storytelling. Hackneyed dialog, two-dimensional characters, but an intriguing setting and plot, for instance. A lot of pulpy novels are great, fun stories, but few are great pieces of writing as well.

Here's a hint: if it's science fiction or fantasy, it's probably not considered 'great literature'.

Having everyone die in the end is bonus points for 'great writing'.

Well, GRRM did that one better and had everybody die in the beginning!

Haven't read those. I read about enough deaths in the news, to be honest, to be interested in having too many in my fiction.

I mean, it's only one example, but Lord of the Rings?

Do 'literature snob' kinds of people actually consider that to be good writing?

Nope.

I think such people are talking about different things. One is more coarse-grain, talking about the story, pacing and themes. The other is more fine-grain, talking about the individual word choices and language play.

You can have compelling characters and plot points but still do a shit job of writing them down. GRRM fits this description perfectly imo.

The concepts are completely different. Here are several examples:

- Imagine yourself writing down the story of The Shawshank Redemption (hey, this approach worked for Terry Brooks!). How much do you think people would like it? More or less than the version Stephen King wrote?

- Imagine yourself writing the same story -- in Mongolian. It's the same story, written down.

- Tolkien's The Silmarillion has several excellent stories in it, which people will be happy to hear you tell them about after you go through the laborious effort of reading it. It's not a coincidence that the material of The Silmarillion wasn't written for publication.

- http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003X9775Q is an example of a fantasy novel with a fairly vanilla plot and some of the worst writing I've ever experienced.

- Pushing Daisies http://www.amazon.com/Pushing-Daisies-Season-Lee-Pace/dp/B00... is a comedic soap opera with superb writing and no particular plot.

- Imagine two people giving a lecture on the same topic. One of them is entertaining, one isn't. The first one had better writing for the same content.

- Imagine yourself playing Beethoven's fifth symphony as a one-man band. The music is widely acknowledged to be a great work. It turns out that the delivery matters. In the analogy, the music is the story, and the manner in which you actually produce it is the writing.