Hey everyone I wanted to know what makes or breaks a story either as a reader or writer.
for me as a writer: dialog. if my dialog is poor we have start from the top
as a reader: characters. If I can't get sense of the character their traits their feelings or motives in the plot It hinders my reading experience
love to hear others takes on this :))
It is combination of setting, linguistic aesthetics and characters. I will stop pretty quick after i detect a Mary Sue in generic 'poor village' or 'big city with dreams and opportunities' environment.
For me, I need a story to be genuinely surprising. No matter how well executed it is, or fantastic the aesthetic choices are, if it consists of nothing but tried and tested structures and cliches that will always go the well-worn route instead of something new and fascinating with intriguing implications, what's the point in even engaging with the story?
That and coincidence-based storytelling. Insane things happen in real life, yes, but unless there's a wizard involved or something, try not to have blatantly astronomical odds occurring every other page, unless you're going to be talking about the fucking Monte Carlo fallacy in your story.
Don't take the simple and easy route. Write the hardest thing to plot. It will far more rewarding and give itself its own identity that nothing else could possibly ever be. You lose the intrigue, you lose the story's purpose. That's why I rarely like resolutions. Hard part's over. You probably know how things will end at this point. Might as well be a fanfic epilogue unless something unfamiliar happens.
None of the characters change.
Now, I get that not every character should change, but it doesn't make sense for none of them to be at least different. This is worse if this is a part of a trilogy because dear God does it make the characters be plot devices, since there's nothing for them to be challenged. If a hero can effortlessly bypass all of the obstacles they have to do for the hero's goal, then it's a boring story, no questions asked. It's not good writing for heroes to just win all the time because it becomes unrealistic and unless the writing explains how is it possible, there's no point for me to like the hero.
At 10/27/23 03:45 PM, BickerySebastian wrote:None of the characters change.
Now, I get that not every character should change, but it doesn't make sense for none of them to be at least different. This is worse if this is a part of a trilogy because dear God does it make the characters be plot devices, since there's nothing for them to be challenged. If a hero can effortlessly bypass all of the obstacles they have to do for the hero's goal, then it's a boring story, no questions asked. It's not good writing for heroes to just win all the time because it becomes unrealistic and unless the writing explains how is it possible, there's no point for me to like the hero.
Sounds like Avatar. And I heard that they're making at least 4 more movies lmao.
Producing a good story, is very similar to producing a good solid fart.
It has to have a good flow; not comming out to quickly, or you'll miss the good juicy parts, but not too slow either, or it will come off as boring and predictable.
It should also leave a good little impression behind, but avoid that big a mess, so you can't clear it up anymore (out of your head, in the story, and out of your undies for the fart, for the readers having trouble keeping up with the metaphor).
You also should not abrubtly close things off at the ending, but also don't keep it entirely open-ended. Just finish it off with a subtle sound of a question-mark. So it has a resounding finish, leaving only a slight hint of mystery behind.
And if you have to force the production to come out quickly: its very likely that only shit will come out of it.
At 10/27/23 03:45 PM, BickerySebastian wrote:None of the characters change.
Now, I get that not every character should change, but it doesn't make sense for none of them to be at least different. This is worse if this is a part of a trilogy because dear God does it make the characters be plot devices, since there's nothing for them to be challenged. If a hero can effortlessly bypass all of the obstacles they have to do for the hero's goal, then it's a boring story, no questions asked. It's not good writing for heroes to just win all the time because it becomes unrealistic and unless the writing explains how is it possible, there's no point for me to like the hero.
This is exactly why I was rooting for the bad guy in the mech-suit, when watching the first one in the movie-theatre back then.
Because the whole plot was so incredibly mindnumbingly boring and predictable.
(If we are talkin about the movie Avatar, aka: Dancing With Smurfs)
Twist Villains, If done right, they can save the whole thing. If they are done poorly, it can ruin it all.
Disney cannot do twist villains right for the life of them (most of the time).
At 10/28/23 03:16 AM, Guidodinho wrote:This is exactly why I was rooting for the bad guy in the mech-suit, when watching the first one in the movie-theatre back then.
Because the whole plot was so incredibly mindnumbingly boring and predictable.
(If we are talkin about the movie Avatar, aka: Dancing With Smurfs)
I end up liking villains often more than good guys. Why? Because villains tend to be better written - they have reasons to act they do, they have often also more layers and they become out more human rather than saints.. And l above all have weaknesses and so on, whereas protagonists more than often end to be either self inserts or just dull blob of writers overpowered favorites.
Lacking purpose or losing its promise from half the story.
Nowadays, I see many stories that avoid the fondamentals of being greater than it can look like.
Lord of the rings was amazing for a good reason, as an example.
Sam was the true hero, but yet he is too humble to become egocentric.
ZombieGhost
Very inconsistent lore for starters.
Like, when a story is trying to take itself seriously and it misses plot elements from before or just scraps storylines in the future, it kinda boggles my mind and takes me out of it for a bit.
Now, i dont count this for everything, stuff like comedies of course shouldn't be super lore heavy, just well written with good jokes that make ya laugh. But if a story has inconsistent lore and doesnt attempt to address and fix it, yeah that can definitely break a story for me.
Now, consistent lore on the other hand, can totally make a story a big deal for me.
whenever a story that's supposed to be serious gets self aware, in the humor way.
overdone loads already.
even me talking about how it sucks has been overdone, it just needs to stop
richard milhous nixon looks as if he were a funked lyndon b johnson but not
A story is always made by witty delivery. Spoken or written, a sensible sequence or perspective of the historic events can make things more interesting than with an unattached-anonymous 3rd person narrator. Also, ntr is brokenly unpopular for whenever it needs good ruining.
Bad jokes. I’m way more of a fan of comedy than serious stories, so well-written jokes matter to me a lot. Even if a movie, show etc. has amazing visuals or characters or music, if none of the jokes land then I’m not watching/reading/playing it.
Chillin' and grillin'
The story shouldn't inflect physical pain to the reader/viewer/listener.
the characters are the main thing for me. i feel like its mostly an anime problem (shounen specifically) but people can really hype up a show as being amazing when its really only for the fights while the characters are boring or not very interesting. i have to care about why theyre fighting before i can be really impressed by it.
How the characters development happen around, and/or everything is just ship things. Or if things took hella slow to pick up.
Yeah, idk
Cool, wild and Groovy beat.
CHOSEN ONE/THE PROPHECY bullshit usually does it for me. If you're going to go down that route then you better have something REALLY sick to back it up.
Hip modern dialogue™ and meme references are another one.
These ones kinda go together but stories that insult the intelligence of the audience by:
A. Being too preachy or hamfisted with themes/morals, especially if it's not that deep.
B. Oversimplifying a complex real-world issue you base your story around.
I'm not sure which is worse.
Several things, all of which come from different forms of entertainment than simply reading a text: but the writing that went into that media SUCKED..
Pacing that fluctuates constantly: I remember trying to watch the reboot(?) Of Texas ranger and it did some build up to specific scenarios, but ended them QUICKLY. Things I thought would be another ongoing thing was resolved a few episodes later and this continued rapid fire until I felt ennui to everything that happened and stopped watching. It started to feel like a Texas version of Scooby Doo...
Lack of action in ACTION STORIES: Self explanatory, I dropped anime that promised action and started having very long and deep conversations... I don't really care what world building or whatever you're trying to do, after a specific point; you settle every argument with a solid punch to somebody's teeth..NOT TALKING!
Weak and long dialogue: I agree that weak dialogue is kind of a turn off... But (even if it's meaningful) long speeches literally bores me to tears, no joke, it happened more than once. To not go on too long; I fall asleep when a character talks like a instruction manual
Okay here's my Makers and Brakers.
Makers: cute stories, minor characters actually getting story that actually is at least somewhat important to the plot, nice characters, understandable actions, character development, BALANCE (not too little but not too much), high stakes, joke plots (if done well), running gags appearing not too much, good timing, mean characters if they get what they deserve, mean characters actually being entertaining and funny that don't ruin the plot or storyline... (impossible o_O)
Brakers: out of character moments, unnecessary information that drags out the whole story, "everything = bad" world (I'm actually getting sick of seeing like everything becoming depressed and something like that... -_-), "everything becoming like a reality as if the reality is the worst thing to ever exist on earth, but because it's true, it's relateable and therefore it's good" -_-, plot armor, characters suddenly declining like shit, moments/stories that make little to no sense based on it's own logic that it's striving to, too much filler (filler is fine if not used too much and if it's funny filler too), very bad sections appearing in good episodes, unfunny running gags, one trick pony / one quote characters, too many repeated lines, poor audio quality (mostly when the audio is bad or when the audio is so inconsistent (much worse)), characters trying way too hard to become a spotlight (always the annoying ones or the class clownies I would say), uncomfortable topics that are just straight up ewwwwww -_-, everyone suddenly having shizophrenia moments -_-, characters not learning anything, unjustifiable character getting 100% more justice than the other ones, nft >=[, crypto >=[, trying their hardest to defend any evil people / evil corporations, world is destroyed nothing exists anymore because we are so dumb ahahaha ending -_-, heros flattening the stake like literal netherlands after they encounter a problem, "i will always help you you will the best you are so cool omg omg! ^_^" mentality, twitter >=[, x >=[, social media apps somehow existing in today's cartoons or something, cartoons always having a humanitistic-like thing, too much explaining, nerd when he explains too much, velma >=[, grossout humor -_-, bland looking characters, minor characters not getting any screentime, character developing too much or trying too hard to get developed, "whaaaaaaat" moments where characters just try too hard to make random funny faces (totally not an anime issue i swear)
Okay maybe I was being a bit pessimistic, but you get the point..
