PaperDemon Art RPG

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You know a story is good when....

  1. Posted on Sep 23, 2007, 7:30:14 AM UTC
    ID: 19639 | #11
    raesquirrel
    Level 3
    XP

    On Sep 9, 2007 5:29 pm, Wandersoul said:
    [quote]

    Hmm. For me, probably the best thing is well-developed, (emotionally) realistic characters. I love a character-driven story. Other than that, umm...there's more but my brain's a bit dead at the moment. Might add something else later. xD

    [/quote]

    I'm with you. :yes: I can easily read a thousand pages of nifty characters interacting.

  2. Posted on Sep 23, 2007, 11:20:34 AM UTC
    ID: 19644 | #12
    PitaBread
    Level 12
    XP

    On Sep 15, 2007 5:19 am, Wandersoul said:
    [quote]

    On Sep 14, 2007 7:00 am, Sliverbane said:
    [quote]

    You know a story is good when you 'talk to the book'

    This is me my room alone with my book:  "He's gonna do it!?'  "Stupid, don't talk to her she's got the poison" "Oh, hurry up and save them!"

    That's happened to me a couple times.

     

    [/quote]

    -shiftyeyes- No, I've never heard of that happening...xD Lol, I'm terrible for doing that.

     

    You know a story's good when you're reading, and suddenly it's midnight and you're thinking, 'Shoot, I need to get up at 5:30.' :p

    Yeah, like pretty much everyone else said...the pacing and character development is what really draws me through. In a lot of ways 'good' or 'bad' writing is pretty subjective, once you get past the basic 'rules' to writing...depends on what someone really focuses on when they're reading, and what makes it, ahm, I don't know -- "effortless" for them to read? Don't know if that makes sense.

    [/quote]

     

    Hehe... me too.  I've done both those things.  What's worse, is when I 'talk' to my books, they sound like mad mumblings... 

    When I read 'The DaVinci Code', I started around 8pm, and the next thing I knew, it was 4:30, and I had to be up at 8!  Needless to say, that repeated the following night.  I just HAD to finish it, lol. 

    Adding on to all that...  As a writer/reader of fanfiction, and as fanfiction contains characters that are already well-known and their characteristics are nothing new, I think that it all comes down to the plot.  If there aren't enough sub-plots (or any) to supplement, and if the main plot is too boring, people will stop reading.  And, as it goes without saying in fanfiction, bad grammar and atrocious spelling is DEFINATELY a turn-off...

  3. Posted on Jun 8, 2008, 6:33:32 PM UTC
    ID: 21788 | #14
    Megaptera
    Level 5
    XP

    I know this is an old thread but I want to resurrect it. It's a good discussion.

    The first thing that makes or breaks a book for me is the language. Some authors have the ability to make me read slowly and savour every word. A professional author who really drags me in this way is Edith Pargeter, creator of Brother Cadfael (under the pseudonym Ellis Peters). A fanfic writer who does it is 'Alicia', whose Sherlock Holmes slashfic is archived at No Less Remarkable.

    The second thing is that the characters have to behave in ways that make me like them, understand them, or just generally be intrigued by them. If they're too predictable (note that 'in character', when it's fanfic, does not count as predictability) or if they do inexplicable and stupid things to make the plot go the way the author wants it to, I'll lose interest.

    As long as those conditions are met, I can be entertained by a wide variety of wacky plots and premises in pretty much any genre. In general, I think all of this points to my wanting to be shown that the author is thinking things out. If someone is out of character, there has to be a reason for it; or if the premise has some weird or fake science in it, I have to be able to believe that things do work that way in that universe.

  4. Posted on Jun 10, 2008, 10:07:14 AM UTC
    ID: 21811 | #15
    puayen
    Level 14
    XP

    This is an interesting thread, how did I miss it for the first time O.o

    It seems intuitive that a good book or a good movie is one that stands up to crits, that provokes crits, have depth etc... but, in truth, I think different stories appeal to different people.

    For me: a story needs a great introduction. If the intro doesn't appeal to me (or perhaps the summary, covers etc), then the likelihood is that I won't even read it. I tend to find environment-describing intro with things like "it's a cold dark night with howling wolves" very cliche these days. A thrilling intro with a non-plot-vital disaster on the first sentence would be cool.

    If the story chooses the approach of character-driven, then I like it to be adequately long, like lord of the rings, where I can get to know the people well- and miss them when the story ends. However, having way too much background info for the characters will bore readers and have them ask: does it even matter which kindergarten he came from?!

    So yeah, that's that.

  5. Posted on Jan 7, 2009, 9:37:48 AM UTC
    ID: 23247 | #16
    Lhunuial
    Level 20
    XP

    Well, background is ok as long as it is important to the story. It has to linked to the story and explored through the story. Sorry, I don't really know how to explain that better.

    I used to be really into writing about the environment, but I'm slowly changing that as it's come to annoy me a bit too.

  6. Posted on Aug 15, 2009, 2:55:55 AM UTC
    ID: 24678 | #17
    MythsAndDreams
    Level 1
    XP

    I love a book with good characters and a plot that hooks me. I like the characters to seem human and grow as the story goes on. A couple weeks ago I found a fantastic fanfiction and I absolutely loved it because the characters in it weren't flat, boring 2-dimensional people. The writer portrayed them so realisticaly and the story focused on the characters.

    I'm more of a character oriented person than plot, but I like the books I read to have an interesting plot. Apologies to any Twilight fans out there, but the story has decent or good characters, but absolutely no plot. That's a turn off for me.

    This is really good thread, I'm surprised I didn't find it earlier

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