DISCUSSION: What do you look for in a story?

[canisaries]

Here goes that Canis again makin a new thread out of nowhere oh boy oh boy

Anyway, had this idea as I was pondering about how to start a fic I've been planning. What is it that people want to see when they open the cover the cover of a book or click on a title? What keeps them reading? Why are they looking for stories to read in the first place? What do they want to leave with once the back cover is met? I realized that I didn't need to keep wondering it by myself, but had a whole community of writers with their own takes on the issue.

So, uhh... yeah, I kind of gave all the questions already there. Wanna answer 'em? Answer 'em. I know they're pretty open-ended, so if you're having trouble, think about what's made you drop a story. What was missing? We may learn something surprising from the answers, something we may even be able to implement in our future writing to improve it.

 

[Iggy]

I can't come up with an easy answer on any of those, but I'll try. Any story with an unique approach or premise that catches my fancy has my attention, but any cliché I come across brings me one step closer to hurl the thing away and never look back. No, I don't think clichés are bad, every story has them (for good or bad), but rely on them too much makes for a lazy writer. There are so many stories out there, there's no reason to linger with the badly written ones. I love to read about good plot twists, learn new words, descriptions, or sentences that make me try harder (and feel really stupid about the drivel I produce).

I think, in the end, what I particularly look for in any story is to be properly entertained and surprised. Maybe this answer is somewhat vague, somewhat abstract, but right now, it's the best I can do. A good suprising ending, one that is in good faith with the story and its population, yet refreshingly original, can leave it linger in my head.

 

[lucarioknight56]

In general, I look for stories that go outside the box. I tend to not care for rewrites simply because I've seen the story before. It helps if the synopsis is engaging and shows how unique a story it is compared to others out there.

But what really appeals to me is genre. Most of the time I don't read sci-fi or realistic fiction; I gravitate towards fantasy. There are definitely the occasional stories in those other genres that catch my interest, but they're few and far between. And even then, there has to be the right...tone, I suppose. Like genres, I generally avoid stories that have coarse language and gruesome depictions (with exceptions, such as your work, canisaries) because they are not things I'd be willing to write or describe myself. These two things happen to fit PMD pretty well, so I tend to read those--provided that they have a new take on the universe instead of a rewrite.

In terms of fan fiction, what will immediately turn me off is poor grammar and/or style. If I'm going to reading something, I don't want to have to work out what they are trying to say. Oh, and to be honest, I find it hard to be engaged with the standard journey fic in Pokemon. They're cool and all, but given how most never seem to be finished, it's hard for me to stay engaged. I like stories that are around the same length as a standard novel because I is likely to have the pacing and time requirement that I can easily manage.

Outside of that, I don't really have anything else. Characters and plot ought to be engaging, sure, but if they can hit me with a compelling premise, I'd be willing to stick around.

 

[diamondpearl876]

I look for stories that make me think about the real world and/or the world that's portrayed in the story. Stories that make me feel for the characters, make me feel like I could know them in real life. Stories that make me damn sure I need to see it through to the end because the idea of putting it down forever, for any reason, just seems insane.

Sounds dramatic, maybe, but that's how enchanting writing can be for me. I don't care about genre or cliches or length or whatever if the above qualifies.

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

I feel like this is a potentially enormous subject, since it's pretty much carte blanche to talk without end about taste in fiction and what titles one's enjoyed and why. Still, I'll try to answer each of those three main questions in a way that makes sense to me, in order to narrow the scope a little.

What stories catch my eye:

I mostly read speculative fiction. That's not difficult to figure out, honestly. I don't mean I just read sci-fi, though. Speculative fiction, for me, is fiction about a change in the rules. If we had X magic, or Y tech, or time travel, or divine influence, or a secret world of some kind, what then? What then, huh? I like to see humanity reimagined in different conditions. The human experience with the universe, the impossible, and the might-be as the backdrop.

One of my favourite examples to explain this is the Chaos Walking trilogy, by Patrick Ness. The 'novum' (the change in the rules) is Noise, the involuntary broadcasting of the thoughts of all living beings with the exception of human females. Technically it's a sci-fi setting, but the protagonist isn't really aware of any sci-fi elements besides the Noise. Noise doesn't just exist as a kind of undesirable superpower, though. Society changes because of it — the protagonist's village is male-only due to a mysterious social cataclysm before his generation, and other settlements have various superstitions or governance based on their response to the Noise. Noise also limits and enables the characters: it gives their feelings and location away and makes stealth impossible, but it also can be used as a weapon by startling your enemy with aggressive thoughts.

Magic: the Gathering is a great example of a fantasy setting where there's plenty of focus on how human lifestyles are massively different on different worlds where magic behaves in particular ways. Most classic fantasy doesn't bother going into how human life is any different from that of the real world. Lord of the Rings substitutes orcs for mongols, for example, but a farmer in Poland is a farmer in Gondor is a farmer is a farmer. Star Wars is "sci-fi" that doesn't make human life any different from feudal Japan, if we're honest, but Star Trek explores a society of humans where, since work is voluntary, the cast consists entirely of self-motivated explorers driven by ideals rather than necessity. That's different. Of course, I still enjoy sci-fi/fantasy content that doesn't really tick my boxes for "Spec Fic" I just really love solid worldbuilding and stories that couldn't work in real life.

How I like my prose:

This one's tricky. After all, prose is so subjective, so hard to pin down. I have enjoyed many different styles. What constitutes the prose I like is a very difficult thing to explain. Still, I think I most like reading fiction where there's a clear voice to distinguish the narration from the tone of a wikipedia style guide but not one that's too intrusive or dominates the framing (first person past tense is often guilty of this), fiction where the vocabulary hits that sweet spot just before purple prose where it's exactly as poetic and esoteric as it needs to be, fiction where it flows uninterrupted and every line is like a carefully given speech or a piece of music. Good writing is a funny thing. One person's perfect prose is another person's drab and indulgent nonsense.

Stories also have components besides prose, I know! There's a lot to fit in, here. I think I gotta say I really appreciate when the plot feels natural rather than contrived, when characters have proper virtues and flaws bakes into themselves, when there's an adult perspective on life present in the narrative that shows the author has spent a damn long time thinking about things. There's gotta be authenticity, and there's gotta be heart, and there's gotta be something that I just have to know more about. I love weird and unusual stuff, stuff that's interesting and memorable. I love thoughtful, contemplative stuff, that reexamines ideas carefully. I like stuff that gets me, that touches on those parts of human experience that are particular to my soul. That's not something easily explained.

The way in which a story should leave me:

Terry Pratchett is one of the finest authors I have ever read. The reason for this is that he has written so many wonderful stories where having finished the book, I find myself not only changing the way I think, but wanting others to see and understand those moments that meant so much to me in his work. The moment where Death defends fairy tales to his granddaughter, because how else can something like mercy be learnt and made real? The moment where Sam Vimes arrests a dragon, or the patrician of the city, or the command staff of two armies, because that's what justice is. The moment where an old witch insists that evil begins when people treat each other as things. There are others, but I mustn't spoil you too much. The point is, Terry Pratchett will always be my very favourite author because he makes me believe in the good of humanity through both his fury and his affection towards our failings. In short, I should come away from a story with something to think about relating to life and people and the world. This man got it. He really did. I hope I will get it too, eventually.